


Puolikas Ihminen

by onnenlintu



Series: The Kasvatus Series [6]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-04 23:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 67,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14603853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnenlintu/pseuds/onnenlintu
Summary: Final work in the Kasvatus Series. Very much about sheep. Also about birds, the question of exactly how many trees it's possible to fit in one country, magic runes, Karelian lamenting, scythe maintenance, and yet more getting past your issues.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oho, here it is, the final work in the series! I'm aiming to update this less often than I updated "kuu saa valtansa auringolta" - spring has finally come to Finland, the lake has melted and the forest paths are no longer covered in snow, so swimming and bike riding are going to be occupying some of the time I would otherwise be spending writing! I will definitely still try to work regularly, though, because I'm looking forward to how his will go.
> 
> Also, fear not, the encounter with Mikkel in this chapter will be explained, as Reynir proves a plot point in a totally different fic I have planned. Too much detail given now would be a spoiler later, so you'll have to wait!

Reynir spread his clothes over his bed, trying to work out how many more of his warm things he could fit into the bag he was packing. He'd been thoroughly assured it would be colder in Finland, and was determined to be much, much better prepared than he'd been the last time he left Iceland. Then again, he was going to be there for so much of the summer as well, and apparently that got a little warmer than the Icelandic one. He ended up sacrificing the space of one summer shirt for another thin wool undershirt and some gloves to go under mittens. Even here, the early January darkness and cold were enough to make thoughts of summer dress seem very distant. He supposed that if it was really that warm in the summer, maybe he wouldn't need many clothes anyway.  
  
"It's not like last time", he'd told his parents. "I know where I'm going, and Joutenvesi is cleansed land. There's a house, and they say they have mages and cats, and that people are always checking to keep the farmlands' edges clean and clear." His mother was still worried sick about him venturing out there. She'd never truly gotten over the fear that had been put in her when her youngest had last vanished, which Reynir really did feel bad about. He couldn't indulge his mother's worry forever, though, and he'd known the person he would be staying with for several years now.  
  
There was the fact that he still had no real idea what Laura looked like, but they'd been writing to each other for so long, and Reynir was very sure he trusted her word about the farm being as safe as anyone could hope for. Maybe this going well would be what helped his mother finally accept that nothing could keep Reynir at home forever. Anyway, he was nearly twenty-six years old, although it seemed that didn't make it any easier to sit still during the ride to Reykjavik. Sure, he had grown in many ways since the last time he went traveling, but the idea of experiencing new things still sparkled enough to make every metre of the journey out very exciting.  
  
Reykjavik itself was a weird experience even before Reynir got on the boat. On his way to the docks, he ran into someone he hadn't seen in years, a companion from his last set of travels who he'd tried to stay in contact with but clearly wasn't that up-to-date on after all. Mikkel had seemed awfully harried, and the young Danish woman with him had been very nice but equally distracted. They had managed to have a short conversation about a few people in Iceland it turned out they'd already mutually encountered, but all too soon Reynir had needed to catch his boat.  
  
It was a real shame, because Reynir did still really wish he had the chance to catch up with that group of people. The ticket was bought, though, and he had connections to make in order to complete his long journey east. Reynir had only the bare minimum of information about where exactly he was going and when, as the communications about details of this visit had been kind of patchy. It was very understandable, as Laura had needed to do so much over the past year.  
  
First there had been repairing everything enough, then acquiring some in-lamb ewes, then the first season of shearing and lambing with a group of mostly inexperienced people. This year, there would be many more sheep and not much more experience among them, so Reynir was quite sure Laura had meant it when she'd told him that he was welcome for as long as he could be bothered to stay. He hoped the rapport they'd established also worked in real life, because he was arriving well in advance of when the real work started. He could find his ways to be useful in the winter too, probably, but he was still trying to mentally prepare for some awkwardness. As the boat finally left Reykjavik, giving him his third-ever sight of Iceland's coast from the sea, Reynir felt real excitement about how much mystery there was still left in these journey plans. Watching the mountains slowly retreat behind him, he wondered if he'd catch the coast of Norway properly this time.  
  
Even with the passenger boat being much bigger than his last ride, the cold swell of the sea rocked it, and the unbroken gale bit at Reynir's face whenever he ventured onto the deck to try to stare at any hint of passing scenery. Even as curious as he was, Reynir didn't ever stay out for long, as the force of a winter wind on the open sea was almost enough to steal the cloak from his back. The fog was so thick that the hoped-for glimpses of the Faroes and the Shetlands were impossible, and when Reynir slept, he didn't feel like he was likely to be missing anything important. By the middle of the third day, the ship did start to become boring, but as they finally rounded the southern tip of Norway land became visible again.  
  
They were getting towards the flatter places that had become very familiar to Reynir during his surprise journey through Denmark, and he couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding as he contemplated the featureless profiles of the visible shores. Passing through the thin strait between Sweden and old Denmark, then under the bridge that had once connected them, felt decidedly spooky. They did finally reach Rønne, though. The last of the daylight over its harbour illuminated a skyline of low buildings that wouldn't have looked totally out of place in an Icelandic coastal town. Reynir found a small guesthouse he'd written down the name of before leaving, the owner greeting him in Icelandic before he'd even had the chance to open his mouth.  
  
In the morning, Reynir entertained a brief hope that the huge ship emblazoned with fat orange swirls and _TALLINK_ in bold blue letters would be his ride to Finland. It had turned out to be actually destined for Norway, and when Reynir looked closer he did see that the red, white and blue of its prow's gaudy dragonhead were more after the arrangement of the Norwegian flag than the Icelandic one. The friendly worker who approached him when she saw his lost expression and handful of notes spoke very good Icelandic. She responded to his many questions about how all this worked by explaining that such ships did go to Finland sometimes, but only from Sweden. Apparently there was rarely occasion for large groups of Danes to travel to Saimaa, so the boat he wanted was further down the harbour. "You'll know it by the Finnish flag! Come back if you have any more questions."  
  
Reynir was very grateful to find that the whole harbour seemed to present signs with Icelandic subtitles tacked on. Hopefully this bode well for how things would go once he reached Finland. Reynir had heard from his siblings many times that Icelandic was good enough to get by in Sweden and Norway, and while he really hadn't spent enough time here to know for sure, this seemed to be true in Denmark as well. Reynir felt quite confident that he'd be understood in Finland, despite not speaking the language at all. He'd tried to learn a couple of phrases before he left, but none of it had stuck. Trying to keep even two words of that language in his head was like trying to use a handful of grease as a football. His convictions about people's helpful Icelandic skills were not challenged as he boarded his boat, a small vessel with a Finnish flag flapping and cracking in the still-brisk wind.  
  
The light was gone again by the time they reached the southern tip of Gotland and turned out into the open ocean. Reynir once again found himself with little to look at, so studied the map on the wall, which named the bit of sea they were approaching as _Suomenlahti_. The short winter days left the sea thick with freezing fog, turning the view into just a small field of cracked ice, and it was quite late the next morning when Reynir finally got the sense that they had entered the long cove that led up to the Saimaa canal. As they spent the day approaching the shores of Finland, Reynir began to notice that there were some very big differences between here and Iceland. Finland was both flat and seemingly entirely covered with trees.  
  
Of course, Reynir had seen forests in Denmark, and had marveled then at just how many trees it was possible for there to be in one place. He had remembered what he'd heard about how outside of Iceland, it was considered strange for a landscape to be as devoid of them as he was used to, but it had still been surprising to see so many in real life. As the second day ended and they entered the Saimaa canal, he found himself mentally upgrading his ideas of what it was possible for forest to be. The trees he could see the evening outlines of were so tall, the snow on them so thick, the darkness under them so deep. Pines shot up high, long bare trunks with their branches looped and gnarled at the top, and spruces spread stately under their winter blanket. Trees and snow seemed like an odd thing to be this impressed by, but he truly had not seen the likes of the trees and snow in Finland before.  
  
In the early hours of the morning, the boat finally came to a standstill. Reynir was briefly woken up by the change, falling asleep again quickly. They wouldn't be kicked off until sunrise, and he knew there was still more travel to come now he'd reached the south end of Saimaa. Emerging from the boat in the morning was another exercise in being stunned by how many trees there were everywhere. Even among the buildings and close to the dock, Finns seemed to preserve as much of the forest as they could, every bit of land that didn't have a specific use being given over to more frosty-needled trees. There were no Icelandic signs on this dock, so Reynir wandered a little, trying not to get too far from the boat. He knew he would be picked up by somebody, but who exactly and what they looked like were still a mystery.  
  
People were milling around, mostly moving away from the boat, but Reynir did spy a few people picking their way through the crowd against the flow. A small woman was stopping to ask questions of people as she went, the sound of it blending into the indiscernible mass of Finnish generated by people's greetings and remarks. After a few questions, one person she approached looked around them and pointed at Reynir. Following the line of their gesture, her face lit up and she made a beeline for him. She was one of the most generally diminutive people Reynir had ever seen, her almond-shaped eyes bright despite a slightly tired demeanour. While her approach was fast, she hesitated for a moment before getting quite close enough to merit conversation.  
  
"Hello?" Reynir was hoping the hints at this woman being searching for someone meant the someone was him.  
  
"Ah!" She perked up. "Reynir?"  
  
"Laura?" Reynir really wasn't sure what he had expected Laura to look like, exactly, but he was still surprised.  
  
"No. Sorry. Sanna." Reynir was still relieved to hear it. A few months before, Laura had finally dropped her practice of referring to everyone by initials and had given Reynir the names of a couple of people. The odd habit had mostly been maintained, and Reynir still had no idea what to expect from most of the people he'd be working with, but Sanna he had some detail on. Laura had never mentioned that Sanna was so incredibly tiny, though.  
  
"You're so short!" Oops. That was not how you were meant to greet people.  
  
"You're so tall. I did not expect so much." Thankfully, Sanna seemed to share his reaction of mild fascination and surprise at the mental image not quite meeting reality. "Excuse already my bad Icelandic. Laura is much better, but she does not come today."  
  
"It's fine!" Reynir had definitely heard stronger Finnish accents. Well, one, quite a long time ago. He was trying not to think about all of that. It was hard when nearly everyone here seemed to have a face that was at least a little reminiscent of the last strongly-accented Finn he'd spoken Icelandic to.  
  
Sanna pointed at the bag Reynir was carrying. "This is all?"  
  
"Uh, yeah."  
  
"Good. That will make today more easy. It is cold, let's go."  
  
As they traveled and spoke, Reynir found it a little difficult to get a clear read on Sanna's personality through the slight barrier of her very purely functional Icelandic skills. The fact her face and colouration were so similar to the three Finns he'd seen the most of was bringing up quite a lot in his mind. It wasn't that Reynir wanted to forget about any of them, exactly. He'd wondered quite seriously if it would be possible to go via Keuruu, just to see if the people he remembered were doing okay. He would have loved to meet any of those people again, but it was complicated.  
  
The main thing was that despite how long it had been, he did still feel bad for the last interactions he'd had with Onni. The feeling of having done wrong was even worse now he'd had time to think about it. His reasons for behaving that way seemed so deeply immature now. Of course it had been a stupid idea to lie, and reflecting later on the exact nature of his short-term desire to keep Onni interacting pleasantly with him, Reynir had realised it had been totally situationally inappropriate to act on. It was very far from his finest hour, and he knew it. He'd almost certainly never meet Onni again, but the fact there were so many people here who looked like him - was it rude to notice that Finns almost all had really similar faces? - definitely brought up a bit of the niggling guilt Reynir still held.  
  
Sanna didn't need to know about that, though, and she was doing her best to keep a conversation going as she led him on a complicated route across this whole network of lakes. It was indeed cold, but very beautiful here on the water. Reynir's remarks on the constant presence of the trees were met with slight bafflement. "Don't you have forest in Iceland?"  
  
"Not really, no."  
  
"Then what is between towns?" Sanna genuinely didn't seem able to grasp the idea of not having large amounts of trees everywhere.  
  
"Fields. Mountains. Volcanoes, glaciers. You know, the usual."  
  
"Volcano, I think I know what is it, but glacier, no."  
  
Reynir explained what he meant by a glacier as they crossed yet another stretch of water between two islands, the boat seemingly being little more than someone's own vessel and the arrangement looking very much like Sanna was just asking people for a ride. The things he referred to were not totally familiar to her, but she did say she could see what he might mean. Reynir supposed her attitude to this conversation answered his question about whether all of Finland was like this. The concept of an entire country totally covered with such deep forest was slightly magical, and his awe at it did help to drown out the old memories of doing wrong.  
  
The system of asking for boat rides broke down halfway through the day. One smallholder apparently didn't feel like taking them across to the next island until she'd had her lunch, and said lunch turned out to take about two hours. Sanna just shrugged. "Maybe everyone is asleep when we come. It's okay. Everyone has more time to say hello on morning, anyway." Despite this and a few other minor delays, by the time Reynir started to feel truly tired they were already tramping up a long path from the lake towards their final destination. Once they reached it, Reynir was definitely ready to sleep.  
  
"We have room coming in, ah, in the above part. But we were busy, and I think it is not ready. Tonight is in here, is it okay?" Sanna helped Reynir pull a mattress from where it had been leaning against the wall, both of them trying to be quiet enough to respect the late hour. Reynir was actually quite grateful to be near the fire in the most central room tonight, and before Sanna disappeared he thanked her profusely for going to such an effort to pick him up. He hadn't been misled when he'd been told Finland was incredibly cold. The tiredness made it easy enough to sleep anyway, but the thought of sleeping upstairs soon made Reynir very grateful for the extra layers he'd brought.  
  
The first disruption to Reynir's sleep came when a light breath tickled his face. It was well before sunrise, and opening his eye a crack revealed the looming figure of a young child pressing their face extremely close to his. Light was coming from somewhere at the side, and Reynir could dimly make out a very pale blond mop surrounding a button nose and curious expression. At the sight of him moving, the child scrambled back, gasping dramatically. From the side, another child spoke in a stage whisper. _"Oho, Viivi! Se heräsi!"_ The two of them immediately scarpered, and Reynir ended up drifting back off to sleep, sure he'd make their acquaintance properly at a more reasonable hour.  
  
He was absolutely not expecting what his real wake-up call turned out to be. The voice that emerged from the doorframe made Reynir jerk upright immediately at the familiarity.  
  
_"Saatana!"_  
  
"Lalli?" Reynir was sure for a moment that he must be hallucinating the wiry man standing in the doorframe, but there was no mistaking that attitude of utter annoyance.  
  
Another voice emerged from behind Lalli, the tone concerned rather than angry. _"Voi ei, mitä kulta?"_ If Reynir's brain had been in gear, maybe the sight of Lalli would have made him expect Emil's appearance in the doorframe too. It was not, though, and Reynir's confusion was only matched by Emil's as they stared at each other. Despite all the pictures he'd seen after Emil and the others had appeared in the news and stayed there, it was still quite surreal to see in the flesh how he'd changed since their last meeting. Some of it was new, even to the logical part of Reynir's brain. The newspaper pictures had clearly been taken before Emil's hair had gotten that long, and they'd failed to capture the subtle changes of a little more baby fat leaving his face.  
  
_"Vittujen kevät."_ Lalli spat the phrase out then turned around and left the way he'd come. Emil looked between Reynir and Lalli's retreating back, waved hello to Reynir with an awkward smile, then followed Lalli with a stream of conciliatory noises that Reynir guessed meant this was a surprise to them, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Language notes:
> 
> "Oho, Viivi! Se heräsi!" - "Watch out, Viivi! He woke up!" (Finnish has no gendered pronouns, so this phrase could also be translated as "she woke up" or "they woke up", depending on context.)
> 
> "Voi ei, mitä kulta?" - "Oh no, what is it sweetheart?"
> 
> Sanna knows what Reynir means by "volcano" despite being unsure of the specific word because in both Finnish and Icelandic, they are approximately "fire mountain" and it would be very easy to guess from the component vocabulary.
> 
> I have not translated Lalli's cursing because I imagine people get the gist and it's hard to literally communicate the meaning of Finnish swearing without more explanation, but if people would prefer I went into detail about the poetry of the phrase "vittujen kevät", that's very doable in future.


	2. Part 1: Oak Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Technically, the Finnish word for January is derived from an old word meaning "centre", as in the middle of winter. People often don't know that though, so Lalli likely doesn't either, and "tammikuu" intuitively sounds like it means "oak moon/month".)

The day before it happened had been good, Lalli thought. Mid-January was still close enough to the last solstice for his usual wake-up time to allow him a few hours of darkness. While that darkness was bitterly cold, and leaving a shared bed only made it seem colder at first, the total stillness brought on by the deep freeze was very nice. Outside was so quiet, so crisp, a sky darkened by clouds and tree branches holding him in as safe an embrace as any blanket. He was proud of how well he'd gotten to know these woods now, his methods of laying traps and later surveying them satisfyingly efficient. Knowing where he could save the most time on his skis as he did a leisurely round of his snares was useful, and knowing useful things felt good.  
  
It hadn't been the best yield, but there would still be plenty. Nobody would like the squirrel much, but the partridge could liven something up. Lalli never took much time off from the task of finding extra food for everyone, nor did he want to. The continual gratitude of everyone who lived here was another thing that felt good. On the way back, Lalli noted the droppings of deer, pleased to see signs of healthy ones so close to home. Laura had been keen to grow the flock after a good haymaking summer and opted to keep a lot of last year's lambs, meaning the supply of meat from the autumn slaughter was already running thin. Fish, birds and other small things were Lalli's specialty, but it was good to know that if they needed them, the deer were out here in the woods too.  
  
Lalli emerged from the woods and passed his cabin on the way towards the big house. Entering it, he found it still a little warmer than outside, the stove having burned long enough for the heat to have worked itself into everything. Lalli put his feet on the bottom rung of the little ladder that led up to the space-saving platform Emil had built, stretching up to lean over the bed and the sleeping person within it.  
  
Emil had recognised the sensation of being woken up by a tickly squirrel tail on his cheek instantly. "Gross." He batted the furry dead thing on his face away with minimal conviction, yawning and shuffling around. "I'm awake."  
  
"You should wake up and go feed breakfast to the small ones."  
  
"Guess I should." Emil reluctantly left his warm spot. By the standards of someone like Jaana or Onni, it was still extremely early, but the internal clocks of all three children seemed built to ensure destruction if you let them see dawn without intervention.  
  
Lalli was not planning on hanging around in the kitchen while that loud morning task began, and once the catch was deposited in Miri's hands he'd immediately made himself scarce, taking bread to eat alone on the stairs that led up to the attic. Onni had barely acknowledged Lalli taking up part of the way down as he shuffled out of the room he'd made for himself up there, and just grunted affirmatively when Lalli asked him if he still wanted help with his latest "project" today. With the winter bringing on a slower schedule, Onni had totally given up on trying to seem like someone who functioned well in the early morning, so Lalli would be waiting around for an hour or so yet.  
  
Onni's projects were always interesting somehow, although Jaana and Laura had told Onni again and again that this one would send him blind if he wasn't careful. Lalli had a little more confidence, having seen Onni pick up all sorts of disparate skills before, but still fully intended on letting him drink first if he ever managed to finish a batch. Helping Onni rebuild the still behind the woodshed might just result in another explosion, and Lalli strongly suspected he was setting himself up for another ruined afternoon nap, but he spent the late morning holding things in place while they were stuck back together anyway. Projects kept Onni happy, and that was good.  
  
Lalli took the chance to nap near his cabin's stove in the afternoon, and it wasn't until after sunset that he noticed Sanna was missing. Sini reminded him again that Laura's pen-pal would be coming to stay for quite a while. Lalli hadn't been paying much attention to the discussions surrounding this, the pick-up journey and arrangement of this person's sleeping space being not at all his job. He'd gathered that whoever it was, they were someone she knew from sheep-related things, which could only be a positive. Lalli was slowly picking up the skills required to handle the sheep and their produce, but none of them had the level of practise required to let Laura really relax.  
  
Heading into the dark woods again, he moved by the light of his own faint glow, setting out his network of snares and lures. While he was still in the middle of it, the clouds finally moved, the moon catching the frosty outlines of the pine needles and making the peaks of snowdrifts blaze with white light. It put Lalli in a very peacefully joyful mood as he finally finished everything he had to do that day. Emil was also nearly done with everything when Lalli returned to their cabin, the glow of his lamp barely lighting more than the small table under the bed, where he was sat on the one basic stool they'd made scribbling away on some paper. Lalli slipped into the door without opening it more than a fraction, trying not to let out too much of the warmth before he shed his coat and boots.  
  
"Are you writing to someone I know?"  
  
"Mm-hm. Sigrun."  
  
Lalli took off his long gloves, walked up behind Emil and leaned on his back, draping one arm around his shoulders. Emil made a small happy noise as he felt Lalli's other hand sink into his hair, burying fingers in to scratch at his scalp. Lalli looked over the top of Emil's head and peered at the Swedish writing on the paper. "Has she said anything important?"  
  
"She's basically the same as always. Winter is cold, water is wet, Sigrun wants summer to come so she can fight things. I'm amazed she actually seems to read what I send her, given how boring it must seem." Emil tried to lean back far enough to look up at Lalli. "Good day?"  
  
"Mm."  
  
"I'll be done with this very soon. Sleepy yet?"  
  
"Not very."  
  
The sex they'd had was very low-effort, winter never being a time to ruffle blankets much or take too many of your clothes off, but was still perfectly satisfying. It left their bed warm enough to make sleeping extremely pleasant despite the season, and their bodies soft enough to want to wrap together. When Lalli woke up to the lingering heat of sharing and a still-glowing stove, it should have been another good morning, but he could feel that something had changed in the night. There was a new presence here, something that he might have said was familiar, and definitely would have said was deeply, indescribably annoying.  
  
"Emil. Something's wrong."  
  
"Hngh?" It was much earlier than Emil's usual waking time, but this felt important.  
  
"There's someone new here."  
  
"Laura's pen pal was meant to arrive."  
  
"We should check who it is. I don't like it."  
  
Emil finally opened one eye. "What time is it?"  
  
"Early."  
  
"They're probably not even awake now." Emil shut his eye again, clearly wishing he and the mystery guest still had that in common. Lalli supposed Emil was right, and they should wait to check on whatever had happened over there. He still felt a real grumpiness tainting his morning surveillance of the traps, and when the time came to actually wake Emil up for good, Lalli dragged him towards the house ignoring the ramble about how Laura's sheep-business friend was probably a perfectly fine and normal person.  
  
Releasing Emil's hand and turning the key that had been left in the door, Lalli barged into the main room and immediately recognised the long braid that was hanging off the mattress and trailing over the floor. At the sound of his cursing, Emil followed and was clearly just as surprised as Lalli. Their retreat back outside was followed by yet more cursing on Lalli's part, Emil standing with him in the snow and seemingly at a total loss for what to say.  
  
"Why would she invite _that guy_ to stay here?" Lalli's first coherent expression was incredulous.  
  
"I mean, uh, he - sheep were always his thing, right?" Emil kept looking back at the door. "Wow, I was not expecting that either."  
  
"Aren't there more Icelanders than any other kind of person? Why did she pick _that_ one?" Lalli rarely raised his voice, but his tone and volume now were approaching an uncharacteristic loud whine, his fists balling at his sides.  
  
"Wait, does this mean that when she was complaining about that guy during the first summer I was here, it was him the whole time? I'm pretty sure the guy she ended up friends with is the same one who used to be that annoying one - holy shit." Emil was in his own stream of consciousness, processing whatever revelations this morning's discovery brought on for him. Lalli sunk the balls of his hands into his eye sockets and just made a long, frustrated noise, which seemed to bring Emil back to earth. "Oh, Lalli, I'm sorry, I know you didn't like him."  
  
"He's annoying! I hate his face." Reynir clearly hadn't gotten over his habit of just wandering into places nobody wanted him to be.  
  
"Mm-hmm. Yeah."  
  
"He walks around speaking his stupid language and doesn't even try to do anything else." Lalli didn't really mean that last point as an explanation for his feelings, but the look of sudden understanding on Emil's face said he was taking it as one.  
  
"Last time, he was just making the problem with that worse! I bet it'll feel different now that everyone else around you speaks Finnish." Emil looked pleased with his theory. Lalli responded by crossing his arms and making dents in the snow around him with his foot, knowing full well the unresponsive grumpiness was a little unfair on Emil's efforts to work this out, definitely beyond caring in the face of this day-wrecking surprise.  
  
"I guess. I don't know."  
  
"Maybe it'll feel different this time. Oh, maybe he learned some Finnish!"  
  
"I bet he hasn't."  
  
"Well, we can try it and see!"  
  
Lalli could not at all bring himself to share Emil's optimism. He really thought he'd freed himself of the obligation to deal with people who didn't speak Finnish ever again, but it seemed that nowhere was safe from wandering, clueless Icelanders.  
  
Emil continued. "If you have a problem, nearly everyone here can help you tell him."  
  
Lalli seethed internally at the idea of trying to make chit-chat with Reynir. "Can I tell him to cut his stupid braid off?"  
  
"I guess you can try, but the situation with that guy's hair might be beyond hope. For what it's worth, it bothers me too."  
  
That knowledge did cheer Lalli up a little, somehow. "Did it bother you last time, too?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, every day. I kept wishing I'd actually listened at school so I could tell him to put some oil on that frizz. Awful." Emil looked back towards the house. "Uh, it's kind of cold out here, and I should probably work on getting breakfast going for the kids."  
  
"Mm." Lalli didn't want to go back in there.  
  
"Do you want me to bring you something so you have time to calm down before you see him again?"  
  
"Mm."  
  
"Okay, I'll do that. Uh, Lalli, I think we do have to deal with this, because Laura did say he would be here for quite a while."  
  
"Mm. Okay. Later." Lalli truly did not want to do that, but he could already feel himself calming down a little more. Maybe Emil was right, and Reynir's face would be a little less annoying when he wasn't yet another person making everything incomprehensible. Then again, maybe Reynir wandering around, being obnoxious in Lalli's own country would be worse. The fact that only time would tell how this panned out was already another annoying thing.  
  
When Emil appeared with a sandwich in his hand, Laura was following him. "Lalli! Hey, um, this is a surprise. I had no idea you two knew each other."  
  
Lalli took his breakfast. "Ugh." He really couldn't think of anything nice to say in response  
  
"We can tell him to leave you alone."  
  
"Okay." Lalli took a bite, then had questions occur to him as he chewed. His voice was muffled by the bread in his mouth. "Does he speak any Finnish?"  
  
"Er, no."  
  
"Ugh." There was no joy to swallowing this first chunk of sandwich.  
  
"I'm sorry, Lalli, I was really planning on having him around for quite a while, so."  
  
"You don't have to make him leave." Lalli did get that Reynir leaving would be more of an inconvenience to Laura than Reynir staying would be to him. It was unfortunate, but even despite the fact that he found Reynir to be the human equivalent of underwear sand, he had to acknowledge that.  
  
"Well, good, because I wasn't going to." Laura turned as the front door opened again, revealing Reynir leaning out and saying something in a small voice. Lalli felt the Icelandic incursion grate on him as Laura replied, placing a hand up and gesturing Reynir back. When Reynir gingerly shut the door again, Lalli decided this was quite enough for now.  
  
"I'm going back to the forest." Taking the rest of his sandwich, he did exactly that, leaving this situation to be dealt with by anyone but him.


	3. Chapter 3

The cat jerked at Onni's movement when he woke up, looking at him with an expression of total shock and offense. "Sorry, Herr Nilsson." Onni did feel a certain fondness towards this one and her habit of sleeping in his bed, despite the stupid name everyone had let Emil give her. Herr Nilsson mewed at his retreating back, flicking her big ginger tail, and Onni descended the stairs. He paused as he heard Icelandic being spoken in the kitchen. Oh, yes. That was today.  
  
Onni was not a huge fan of the idea of having to hold down a conversation in Icelandic before noon, but he supposed he would have to get used to it, because one of the few things he'd gleaned about this friend of Laura's was that she was quite sure he spoke no Finnish. From what he could hear as he approached the base of the stairs, Onni discovered two things. The first was that his comprehension of Icelandic had gotten distinctly less quick since moving out here, and the second was that there already appeared to be trouble.  
  
Laura was talking now, in Finnish. "Emil, do you know?"  
  
"I think it's mostly that he was having such a bad time when they met. It could be a lot of different things." Emil's tone wasn't that of total surety.  
  
"He says he thinks it's just that you met at a really bad time. Really, it sounds like it. I had no idea you were involved in... in that." Laura relayed the information to the newcomer with a slight hesitation. "I think he'll get over it. He's often barely seen for half the day anyway, I'm sure we can arrange you two having space."  
  
Onni stayed just out of sight, feeling like there was already quite a lot of context he was missing, unsure whether appearing now would make things awkward.   
  
Laura continued. "I guess it makes sense we never realised, I mean, we always kept it to-"  
  
"To sheep. Which was good, but uh. Yeah, this is something." The man filled in for Laura with at least as much awkwardness as she had.   
  
"And I just never wanted to share too much about them, you know, after how many people had been trying to learn everything."  
  
"Ah, yeah, uh, I see how some of my questions must have come off as more of that. Right."  
  
Onni started to suspect there would be no non-awkward time to enter this conversation, and considered going back upstairs for a moment, but the sound of stampeding feet removed the decision from his hands.  
  
"Onni! Onni! Onni! On _niiiiiiiiiii_!" Viivi catapulted herself forwards against his leg, clinging to it tight as moss on a branch and smiling up at him before making a pronouncement. "Tuuri peed on one of the cats."  
  
"Ah. Give me a moment, I'm coming." Onni looked between her and the door to the kitchen, hearing the man in there go quiet at the sound of Viivi's yelling in the hallway.  
  
"We can't go in there. They're having an _adult conversation_." Viivi intoned the last word with great gravity, pulling at his arm. "Come help. It smells-"  
  
Viivi was distracted by the sight of the mystery man's head poking out from behind the doorframe, drawing Onni's attention as well. Well, that explained why the voice had been familiar. The expression of utter shock on Reynir's face would have been priceless, had Onni not been having an emotional reaction to echo it.  
  
Reynir might have been slightly taller than he'd been last time, his shoulders perhaps a little heftier, less purely gangling than they were five years before. Really, though, not much had changed. The braid was still as long and bright, the eyes still as vividly green. His ability to just turn up and wander into unexpected places was also clearly completely intact. Viivi was still pulling at Onni's clothes, demanding he come help, and Onni tried to engage his brain enough to say something coherent.  
  
"What are you doing here?" It was hard to be as serious as Onni would have liked to be, with a child starting to use him as a climbing frame as she pestered him for attention.  
  
"Oh, um. Well, I came to help with the sheep." Onni wasn't even sure he'd had a track to begin with, but the straightforwardness of Reynir's answer still threw him off it.  
  
Laura and Emil joined them, Laura already looking extremely tired for this time of day. "So you two have also met already."  
  
Reynir looked back and forth between all present and cringed, again looking very much like Onni felt. "More or less."


	4. Chapter 4

"So, it's been a while, huh. I guess you remember me." Reynir kept a little distance as he peered around Onni, trying to work out a way to be helpful. The two older children were milling around Reynir, trying to tell and show him things. He was pretty sure this was all of the children who lived here, the two older ones and the toddler. The fact Onni's attention was half on them was probably a blessing right now.  
  
Onni looked up from the task of wiping the floor clean. "Do you have problem with your memory? I think if not, you remember I don't. Oi, _rauhaa_." The child that was chattering and pulling with increasing force at Reynir's tunic jumped back at Onni's interjection, while the toddler continued to circle Onni, treading bits of her puddle all over the floor. From the scene before him and the expression of the aghast cat licking itself in the corner, Reynir thought he could more or less guess what had happened.  
  
Onni picked up the toddler and, without waiting for a reply, handed her to Reynir. "Keep this one." He quickly wiped off her feet before leaning back over his task. Reynir contemplated the proffered child, holding her up under her armpits with his own arms half outstretched. She had piles of thick, brown hair to match her big eyes, and was heavier than she looked. Chubby and naked from the waist down, she was also slightly sticky and squirming, waving her arms towards Onni. "Mi!" Reynir felt her almost slip out of his hands from the force of her wriggling and pulled her closer. The last thing he needed to do was drop one of their kids.  
  
_"Joo, hetkinen."_ Onni finished what he was doing and took the toddler back, holding her casually against his side and letting her pat her sticky hands all over his face. "Now, what do you want?"  
  
"Um, I followed you because I thought maybe you needed help." He could equally well have followed Laura when she had run off to investigate some noise in the henhouse, or tried to help Emil cook, but trying to gauge how Onni would be with him did seem urgent in itself.  
  
"It's done now." Onni didn't seem to have any particular malice in his voice, only resignation. Now that he'd straightened up and looked at Reynir directly, the blankness to his manner seemed to speak of nothing but intense tiredness. Seeing him in such a mundane setting, holding someone's toddler with a soaked rag in the other hand, was incredibly strange. His fluffy bedhead and his creased, rolled-up sleeves were totally unlike how Reynir had seen Onni before. It made it hard to gauge exactly how he might have changed in the past five years.  
  
"Hah, yeah, I guess it is." It was hard to be sure in this light, but Reynir did think he noticed some flecks of even paler hair at Onni's temples. Well, he'd had plenty of stress in his life, probably. With this thought, the guilt that had been picking at Reynir threatened to bubble up and bring on a very unwisely effusive apology. It was an effort not to let it all burst out. Every time he'd thought about this, he'd gone over what he might say to Onni were they to ever meet again, and now absolutely none of his anxiously rehearsed scripts seemed even a tiny bit appropriate.  
  
One of the older children pulled at Onni's shirt on the side not occupied by the toddler. _"Puhu suomea."_  
  
_"Se ei osaa."_ Onni replied to her and then turned to Reynir. "Is it true, you're not speaking any Finnish?"  
  
"None. Sorry. I just, well, I've just been writing to Laura the whole time and her Icelandic is so good, and I'm so bad at languages, and I didn't think about the kids-"  
  
"Okay. I need breakfast." Onni cut off Reynir's rambling explanation and turned away, carrying the toddler with him and raising his voice as he entered the other room. _"Emil, onko vielä puuroa?"_  
  
Reynir realised he, too, hadn't had any breakfast and therefore needed to follow Onni. Luckily, as he made his move Sanna and two others returned from outside, women Reynir hadn't been introduced to yet. The two new ones turned out to be named Miri and Sini, and both laughed at Reynir repeating their names to himself several times after hearing them. "Stop worrying! They're not that bad, you're just inventing ways to make them harder!"  
  
"I don't want to get them wrong." At least asking about the details of what they'd done just now, on the morning trip to the barn, was a totally safe topic. Tomorrow, it would probably be his turn, and there was a perfectly good reason to keep asking about that to the exclusion of anything else. Reynir tried to ignore how weird it was seeing Emil patiently trying to get two childrens' attention back on their food, as well as the way both of them were staring at him. Onni ate quickly and Reynir held back from cringing as he brushed past to get to the door, close enough for Reynir to briefly feel the heat he gave off. Once again, being reminded of Onni's mundane physical form was somehow startling.  
  
The continued lack of any more outwardly expressed rage didn't seem like much of a reassurance that the anger wasn't there. Reynir was now quite sure Onni wasn't one to just shout at people in front of the children, much less start throwing punches. Just a few minutes of watching Onni let those three crawl all over him had really brought home how few sides of Onni he'd seen before, and knowing more about him definitely made the guilt worse. As everyone finally finished in the kitchen and started to pile their dishes by the sink, Reynir jumped up. "Let me do that."  
  
"Oooh, I won't complain." Miri pointed out where to boil the water and find the soap, then Reynir was left alone for the first time that day, Sini and Miri going elsewhere in the house and the children following Emil out to some task Reynir wished he could ask about. Emil did at least try to make friendly eye contact and fuss the children into a "moi-moi, Reynir!" before they went out, obviously less miffed to see him than the two Hotakainens. The fact that all this time had passed and he and Emil still had the same barrier as before was yet another bizarre thing to contemplate.  
  
Reynir could not at all work out where he was meant to put these dishes while they dried. Miri hadn't pointed out a cloth, nor were there any racks by the side of the sink, so he rolled up his sleeves and decided he'd just try to pile things up there as best he could. While he cleaned wooden bowls and started scrubbing at the porridge still stuck on the bottom of the pot, he tried to think through the situation he'd found himself in. The morning had only just begun, and so far things seemed to be going badly, to put it mildly.  
  
The light shock of seeing Onni cleaning the floor before breakfast brought home some truths about their last interactions that Reynir didn't like very much. Usually, Reynir was honest to a fault, honest to the point of awkwardness. His immediate response being to lie to Onni, trying to preserve Onni's pleasant interactions with him, had been based on the exact same response that made him remember Onni's face perfectly after one glance at his picture. In retrospect, it was incredibly obvious why he'd been so keen to keep Onni talking in the short term, totally ignoring the long-term consequences of such a lie. Looking back on how he'd acted at twenty, Reynir could not work out why on earth he'd let his actions follow such a situationally inappropriate crush.  
  
It had been such a tenuously grounded crush, too. The Onni that had been mysterious, powerful, casually threatening in a way Reynir had found embarrassingly exciting - that seemed like a figment of his imagination now. The wildness of a high-stress situation and meeting a handsome man in his dreams had distorted an ordinary, vulnerable person into something Reynir temporarily failed to treat like one. Sure, he'd tried to reach out afterwards, but it had been very much too little too late.  
  
It wasn't good or kind to put people on pedestals. Reynir knew, logically and emotionally, that the tiny space on top of those wasn't fit for any real human. And Onni was so undeniably human, living here in the same realm as small children and porridge and dish soap. He wasn't a mysterious dispenser of wisdom, he was just _tired_ , and the best thing Reynir could do now was try to give the poor man some peace.  
  
Reynir resolved to be as businesslike as possible around Onni, not to burden him with oversharing, and to try to be useful to him when he could. Perhaps if they met somewhere away from small children, Onni would yell at him again, and he would respond like he deserved it. Fate had brought them together again for some reason or another, and it seemed that reason was at least partly to remind Reynir that deviation from honesty would follow you forever.  
  
"Reynir, not to seem ungrateful for the help, but why are you piling the dishes there?" Laura was standing in the door, and Reynir hadn't noticed her returning at all.  
  
"Um, I can't find the dish rack." Reynir gestured around at all the surfaces he'd looked on. "Do you keep it somewhere?"  
  
Laura looked confused and pointed at the cupboard directly above the sink, then made an "Oh!" noise as Reynir opened it and reacted with total surprise at its contents. "So am I to understand that you don't have drying cupboards in Iceland?"  
  
Reynir stared into the cupboard, impressed by how its actual shelves appeared to be made of the same kind of wire racks that normally would stand by the side of the sink. "No! Wow, what a smart idea! So you just put them in and they dry and get stored at the same time...? That's so neat!" The joy of a new discovery swept away some of the cobwebs that had been filling his brain thinking about Onni, reminding him why he'd wanted to travel to new countries in the first place.  
  
Laura laughed. "I did not expect this to be one of the big, impressive differences."  
  
"But it's so smart!" Reynir stood on his tiptoes and leaned around, taking it in.  
  
"Mm, I can't imagine what else people would do, so I suppose it is." She still sounded friendly as her tone became more serious. "Now, look, today didn't start off well for you."  
  
"Ergh. Yeah, you're not wrong." Reynir started stacking the soapy dishes into the drying cupboard, experimenting with how to arrange the cups on the flat upper layers. He didn't know how to begin to explain what the deal was between him and Onni.  
  
"I think Lalli will get over it, though." Oh, right. Lalli had a problem with him as well. In comparison to having actually direly wronged Onni, this issue seemed to pale in importance, despite the comparative drama of it earlier on. Of course, Reynir could think of several occasions where he hadn't behaved well towards Lalli, but given how they'd all been while cooped up in that tank he felt like he forgave himself for most of it. Lalli wasn't a fundamentally unreasonable person, probably. Surely he'd get it.  
  
"Yeah, um, I guess I can just try to leave him alone."  
  
"Good plan. He manages to almost totally avoid all three of the kids, so avoiding you shouldn't be a huge issue."  
  
"Uh, that reminds me, what were the names of all of those?"  
  
"Janne's the older boy, Viivi's the older girl, Tuuri's the baby." Reynir made a face as Laura announced the last one, turning around to find her echoing it. "Ah, yeah. Look, nobody's going to expect you to talk about the mission if you don't want to, Emil's barely talked about it and he's been living with us for years." Well, that was blunt, but the effort to get things immediately out of the way was very like what Reynir would have expected from the pen-pal he knew. It was reassuring, at least, to not find her personality in real life surprising. There was a practical kindness to how straightforward she was.  
  
"Um, I think for now that's a good idea. Maybe later, I dunno." Reynir really wasn't sure what there actually would be to say, but if it would help someone somehow, maybe that was a conversation he'd be able to have.  
  
"Yes, I understand. Do you want to talk about the sheep? There's a lot to get through."  
  
Reynir finished getting the porridge gunk out of the bottom of the pan and found a place on the highest shelf of the drying cupboard for it. "Yes. Thanks."  
  
None of the information Laura gave him was a huge surprise. The omens foretold a strange spring, the deep freeze likely to stretch far into March. The plan being geared around Reynir traveling before the ice reached its peak, rather than after, had turned out to be a good one. Sheep here would be let out of the barn later than he was used to. He could come with her this evening and would probably understand from explanation then what minor differences there were in the morning routine. Even besides the sheep, there was plenty of work to help out with around the house, and being the new tallest person there made him especially handy. It calmed Reynir down a lot to feel like he had a lot of work to be getting on with.  
  
As their conversation seemed to be reaching some conclusions, another woman Reynir hadn't met appeared in the door, carrying Tuuri. Reynir really was not sure where she'd appeared from, nor how she'd acquired the youngest child off Emil without him noticing her presence. When he commented on these things, she scrunched up her face and thought for a moment. "Did you miss the door on the other end?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, I guess I did. I still haven't seen most of this house."  
  
"We'll show you. So, anyway, I'm Jaana." Reynir nodded.  
  
"Reynir." Jaana moved Tuuri to her hip as she shook the hand he extended. Reynir thought he could guess quite solidly that she was Tuuri's mother. In Iceland, of course, he wouldn't have drawn much correlation between the looks of a child and who their parents might be. He did remember, though, that the Dagrenning programme's deployment in Finland was still projected to take a few more years. The cultural difference in whether or not you expected families to be biologically related was famous enough that even Reynir remembered it quickly, and he saw that nobody else in the house had the hair and eyes to match either of these two.  
  
"Nice to meet. So, I heard you discussing ways you can be useful around here." Reynir wondered if every Finn was as blunt as all the ones he'd met so far. "Here's another job for you. Talk to her." For the second time that morning, Reynir had Tuuri thrust into his arms before Jaana went to the counter and started tearing pieces off a round, flat loaf of bread.  
  
"Um, I can't speak Finnish."  
  
"Oh, no, that's exactly it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to iron a Finnish accent out of Icelandic? Talk to her, try to get her to make the noises back, and maybe she'll have an easier time learning to pronounce an eth." Jaana announced her plan as if it was a very normal request, her so far unobtrusive accent indeed showing a little as she tried to clearly enunciate the letter she meant.  
  
Reynir had already more or less stopped noticing the slightly strange ways most Finns adapted or replaced that letter. It hadn't occurred to him that Finnish might have a totally different set of sounds to Icelandic, rather than just arranging the same sounds differently. That did explain a lot of the oddities. "Um, sure! I'll do my best." He held Tuuri close to his face. "Hello! Hel-lo. Can you say _hvað_?" She barely seemed to notice, squirming towards her mother and mashing her feet against his lap. "Well, I guess I'm here for a while."  
  
"Indeed, you should be." Laura seemed happy to see Reynir and Jaana cooperating already. "I really hope the incident this morning didn't make you feel unwelcome."  
  
"There was an incident?" Jaana turned around from the counter, speaking with a mouthful of bread and looking almost excited to hear it.  
  
"Er, so it turns out Reynir's already met Lalli, Emil and Onni. Lalli wasn't pleased to see him."  
  
Jaana's eyes widened, then narrowed with her mouth forming a "How...", then widened again as she worked out what it must be. "Oh. Wow."  
  
"You are very much welcome here though, Reynir. I mean it." Laura finished her previous train of thought before turning back to Jaana. "Small world, though, isn't it?"  
  
"Absolutely bizarre. I guess I can barely be surprised, though, it seems there's no end of new weird things to learn about that mission." Jaana finished eating, taking Tuuri back. "I guess we'll be getting to know each other better over the summer. Hey, welcome to Finland." She moved Tuuri's hand for her in a wave goodbye before heading back to wherever in the house she'd come from.  
  
"Thanks!" Reynir called to her retreating back and decided he quite liked her. He liked Laura, and Sanna, and Miri and Sini too. Emil also didn't seem to have a huge issue with him. It was still hard not to think about what on earth was going to happen with Onni, but maybe once he got to work on the sheep, most of this would still turn out alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Rauhaa" - "some peace"
> 
> "Joo, hetkinen." - Yes, just a moment.
> 
> "Puhu suomea." - "Speak Finnish."
> 
> "Se ei osaa." - "(He) doesn't know how to."
> 
> "Onko vielä puuroa?" - "Is there still some porridge?"
> 
> A note on the cupboard: everyone in Finland does actually use a cupboard like that for their dishes, and once you use one you forget how on earth you ever did dishes without it. I do not know why nowhere else in the world has them, they are indeed very smart.


	5. Chapter 5

"Hmm. Whose shirt is this?"  
  
Laura looked up at Sanna, seeing her pick an item from the laundry pile and hold it against herself, appraising the length of it in comparison to her torso.  
  
"Oh, this is mine." Sanna stuffed it into her half of the drawer, then picked up the next thing and peered at it. "Is this pillowcase meant for us?"  
  
"Mm, I think that was actually meant to go to the big house." Laura reached over and took it, then sighed. This was meant to go to where Reynir was sleeping now, and brought up a worry she'd been having for a few days now. "Do you think he's actually going to be okay in the attic?"  
  
"Reynir, you mean?"  
  
"Mm."  
  
"It shouldn't be that cold there, right? We gave him a lot of stuff to sleep under, and I'm sure Onni will give him a go with his stove if he's really not coping." Sanna had reached the bottom of the pile of larger things and was starting to pick through their socks, balling them together and shoving them into the top drawer.  
  
"Yeah, see, that's the thing. Do you not think he and Onni have some kind of ... something? Some kind of problem they're not sharing." Laura really didn't know how to express the weird vibe that existed between Reynir and Onni, but it was enough to make her wonder if Onni still really didn't mind the guest staying up there.  
  
Sanna made a face. "It's not like we have anywhere else to put him."  
  
"Still."  
  
"Okay, yeah, I see what you mean but - well, what I said. It was horrible when we were all using the living room, people trying to sleep in the same place we do everything. I think we've all had enough of it. They're grown men, they can handle whatever it is."  
  
Laura sighed again. "I suppose." It wasn't like Onni and Reynir were sharing a room, or anything. Onni's corner of the attic was basically a room in its own right, now, built at the sides and protected from the openness and cold of the rest of the space. Reynir's own nook was also a little bit sheltered, although Reynir was having to continue to work on it. The main thing was that they definitely weren't being forced to look at each other all day, Reynir's habits meaning he was awake and down the stairs usually before Onni even woke up in the morning. Everything was probably fine. It was just hard to not worry a little, after the first morning they'd had with him here.  
  
The two of them kept folding laundry. Laura put on another jumper as soon as she found it, intending to head out to the evening feeding as soon as she was done and aware she'd need it. With January all but over, it was bitterly cold outside every day, and even inside their cabin they couldn't keep it all at bay.  
  
"Sanna?"  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"Do you still think it's going to be freezing all spring?"  
  
Sanna thought about it. "The omens are unclear. I think it will be very cold for a long time yet, though." She had finished balling the socks and was folding up the bag they'd carried their laundry in, her tiny hands arranging it just slightly more neatly than Laura would have ever bothered to do herself.  
  
"Hmm." Sanna, Onni and Lalli had all said the same regarding the forecast for the coming season, with their various types and degrees of detail. Laura had discussed it with Reynir when he'd asked about the coming lambs, and he'd looked very thoughtful on hearing about the omens. He had a great feeling that the spring coming would be very warm, but he wouldn't claim to have had visions about it, exactly. Laura didn't really know what one could expect from an Icelandic mage on that front.  
  
It hadn't been a bad season last year for making feed, at least, and the repairs they'd made to the storage had held perfectly well. Even if the spring growth was late, things would probably be fine. Worrying too far in advance just left you too exhausted to deal with problems if they did ever turn up. When Laura and Sanna went to the evening feeding, they found Reynir already in the barn, holding a very one-sided conversation and ruffling the head of one of the ewes. Despite it being colder in the barn than in the house, he seemed not to mind spending quite a lot of time here. The way he hummed while forking out fine, feathery hay seemed to confirm Laura's guess that so far, things were indeed going fine.


	6. Chapter 6

Reynir had definitely paused when he'd been shown where he'd be living all spring and summer, but he'd realised pretty quickly that Onni's owl form wasn't just for show. He was potentially the worst morning person Reynir had ever met, so being up before the sun made it easy to avoid him for most of the day. His only contact with Onni in the mornings being the sound of light snoring and a closed door was definitely a blessing, their interactions unable to sour if they never actually occurred.  
  
For the first couple of days, Reynir made a studious effort not to start conversations with Onni. The rule had to be broken when Laura found a spare spinning wheel and told him to make as much as he felt like out of the fleece they had stored all around him in that attic. In Iceland, there was ready access to machine spinning, but Reynir had still learned to make good use of both the spindle and the great wheel. A small spindle always hanging on his belt meant every scrap of wool left on a bush could be turned into handy thread, and once you were decent with the wheel, it really didn't take that long to make what you needed for any specific project. It was nice not to have to wait on anyone else, and besides, he enjoyed the feeling of it running through his hands. Now that he was in a place where electricity was barely available, his practised skill was even more useful than before.  
  
"Do you mind the noise of me using this?" Reynir asked him while setting it up, the bag of fleece already stowed nearby and ready for use. He found the humming whirr soothing himself, and had met few people who truly minded it, but presuming to fill Onni's space with a noise he hated definitely couldn't go well.  
  
"It's fine." Onni had answered in the briefest terms possible before shutting the door behind him, leaving Reynir essentially alone in his corner of the attic.  
  
It was really quite cold in here, and while Reynir could do this wearing fingerless gloves, the tips of his fingers got numb by the end of his first spoolful of yarn. His leg was kept a little warmer by the constant pedaling, but the fiddly drafting motions of his hands were nowhere near enough to generate heat. It helped fill part of the evening, though, in a way that nobody found offensive. If he really wanted to get a lot done, he'd go downstairs to where the fire was, but for now it functioned as nice alone time. Getting up early in the morning would only be a good thing, so he decided a brief session with the wheel before an early night was as decent a routine as any.  
  
This really wasn't a hard place to find a routine in. It was an odd mix of familiar sheep work and unfamiliar traditions, the food and buildings continuing to surprise him in many small ways. He learned his way around the big house where four - counting him, five - of the adults and all the children slept, and where the cabins were. Laura and Sanna's was between the house and the barn, and Lalli and Emil's between the house and the closest woods. He still couldn't get over that, the seemingly endless forest that existed beyond the boundaries of the fields, nor the hugeness of a sky with no mountains at all. Every house here was totally made of some kind of tree product, even the solid little henhouse close to the big building sporting a roof constructed of birch-bark and saplings. The touch of someone having painted it red to match the humans' house was very endearing. Coming from a place that seemed to make everything from stone and turf, it was all quite odd.  
  
Another odd thing was when Lalli finally got within Reynir's line of sight for the first time since their unfortunate reintroduction. He'd succeeded in not doing a double take when he saw Emil peck Lalli on the cheek before pointing out where the leftovers were, the same ones Reynir had himself been picking at. It wasn't that he was terribly surprised to see it, exactly, given he'd noticed from the broadcasts that Emil had clearly had some reason to learn Finnish. The actual surprise was realising how satisfying it was to know this had happened for them. While that first meal together had mostly involved Lalli glaring over his bowl at Reynir, he did start to see them out of the corner of his eye in the following days, from a distance and ignoring him. They both seemed so comfortable, and after the hell he knew they'd shared, it made him smile to see it. It was a good sign for Reynir too, probably, if Lalli clearly wasn't always as full of piss and vinegar as he'd seemed at nineteen. Maybe he'd warm up.  
  
It was rare to not have something to do. Everyone Reynir asked could name another task for him to keep an eye on. There was still work to be done on the house, and it was a constant battle to keep the cellar dry enough that the mould didn't grow on the stash of potatoes, onions and carrots hoarded from last summer. Sheep needed mucking out, feeding, checking. Hens needed the same, and the rooster in there was belligerent enough that Reynir would personally have replaced and eaten him, although apparently in comparison to Iceland there were far more things in Finland that needed chasing out of henhouses. Sini had been pretty approving of the pesky creature when Reynir mentioned it over collecting eggs together in the morning. "It's not just the healthy predators he's helping watch out for. Three cats and three mages - oh, four mages now you're here! - keep us pretty safe, but you can never be sure."  
  
"Do they kill trolls? That's so neat!" Reynir had been surprised to hear it. The notion of chickens as a line of defence was a new one for him.  
  
"Well, yes, but they don't take it somewhere safe like a cat does. They'll mob it and peck it to death, but they get bits everywhere." Sini had gone on to tell the story of the time the chickens had been roaming free last summer and had got to a tiny beast before the cats, how she and Onni had discovered the bloody scraps together. Sini initially thought it might have been the aftermath of the chickens fighting, realising what had happened when Onni had looked terrified, grabbed her and dragged her away from trying to investigate the mess. Reynir remembered the way Onni had pulled him back and thrust an arm in front of his vision when they'd encountered Anne's ghost, and felt like he could picture exactly the action Sini was describing.  
  
"We are so lucky that all the kids are immune. Everyone here is except me and Onni, so we got it cleaned up without any real danger."  
  
"Er, not me." Reynir wasn't sure if Sini was trying to include him in the list of "people here" but that probably wasn't something he should chance leaving uncorrected.  
  
"Oh!" Sini looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry! I feel like I should have known, and maybe I even did hear Laura say once, I just, every Icelandic person I've ever met has been - I thought you all used that, um -"  
  
"My siblings are all from the programme but not me."  
  
"Oh! Well, I'm sorry." When Reynir was baffled by her being so apologetic, she tried to explain. "Sometimes people think I must be too because I've clearly been living in Keuruu, where nearly everyone is, and it's annoying when you have to _correct_ people rather than just _tell_ them, you know?"  
  
That conversation, with her casual reference to the mages as their security and reminder of the danger always coming, had made him think that there must be something useful he could be doing besides mucking out sheep. It wasn't obvious yet what that might be, but Reynir did start trying to keep an eye out. His first thought was to lay security down on the ground around the buildings, but that was harder under a meter of snow, unless he wanted to risk trees exploding from the runes on them being activated. Had he been the only mage here, he would have gone for it explosions or no, but clearly there were things being done already. For now, he just watched the Finnish mages in their daily business, trying to work out what precautions they themselves took. He thought he might be about to see some such thing when, lingering in the kitchen over a spot he'd gotten fixated on removing from the counter, he ended up in the same room as Onni for a few minutes.  
  
Viivi had brought Onni one of those Finnish zithers, the kantele even he knew to associate strongly with Finnish magic. _"Onni, soita! Ööö... ole hyvä ja soita."_ After handing it over, she'd sat across the table with a very urgent expression, kicking her legs under her chair.    
  
Onni had made some vague affirmative noises, strummed the strings a few times and found it in tune, then started playing. It seemed to be obliging her request. Reynir worked out pretty quickly from the way Viivi reacted, letting out a little whoop and summoning the other two children at the top of her voice, that this wasn't some emergency magic. He'd kept quiet as Emil appeared carrying Tuuri, leaving her under Onni's watch to be entertained. The few pictures of Finnish mages they'd been shown during Reynir's education had been very similar to this, a stern-faced person leaning over a kantele and singing some arcane poem, the image being greatly mysterious and doomed to remain so by the fact it only existed as contrast to the "real" Icelandic path he was being taught. This was not particularly mysterious, though, nor did it seem to be magic. The children all knew this one and joined in at random intervals.  
  
_"Kas, menninkäinen ennen päivänlaskua ei voi, milloinkaan olla päällä maan-"_  
  
Reynir had no idea what Onni was singing about, but even with the simple tune, it was extremely pretty. He continued to ignore Reynir's eyes on him for the whole duration of his song, paying more attention to the way Janne watched his fingers on the kantele and slowing down in parts with a demonstrative air. When he finished, Viivi piped up within seconds, splitting the peace with her high-pitched voice. _"Soita uudelleen!"_ That was probably a demand to play it again, because to her and Tuuri's great delight Onni started up the exact same song from the beginning. Reynir didn't mind hearing it again either. Onni had a lovely singing voice, intoned gently to suit the understated sound of his instrument, deep and soothing. The spell was broken when after the second round, Onni finally looked up at him. "Do you want to take picture or something?"  
  
"Oh! Sorry." Reynir realised he'd been looking slightly entranced. To be fair, it wasn't hard to make Reynir go into a bit of a trance watching something. He was probably still acting within his resolution to stop bothering Onni, if he took the cue now to go spin at his wheel for a while. Viivi and Janne followed the lead Emil had been setting and gave him a _"moi-moi, Reynir!"_ as he headed upstairs. Onni didn't acknowledge him leaving, and despite this silence having been the status quo for several days now, Reynir felt somehow worse about it than before as he went to start the repetitive work of plying the last two days' spools. It was honestly starting to grate on him.  
  
By the faint light coming from downstairs, he found the lamp and lit it. The wheel rattled as he started pedalling, quickly turning into the familiar hum. Threads made a subtle clap as they twisted together and were made taut. It was easier for Reynir to think when his hands were occupied, and now he thought about how long this was going to go on. He couldn't keep avoiding someone he was living with forever, and they were living together now. It wasn't as if Reynir had intended to disturb his peace. The situation was nobody's fault. It only made sense to try to make it as livable as possible. Onni wasn't totally inflexible, he knew this.  
  
Reynir's hands started to lose their dexterity. He kept at it for a little while longer, this being easier to do with slightly numb fingers than the initial spinning. Enough time passed that Onni came upstairs, entering his room and shutting the door with the usual lack of commentary. Reynir did hear Onni speaking briefly in a low voice, too low to understand even if it hadn't been in Finnish. For the first couple of days, he'd thought this nightly chat was Onni talking to himself, but he realised now that it was just the cat that slept in there with him. Despite saying nothing to Onni himself, Reynir was learning an awful lot about the personality the other man showed in his daily life.  
  
Onni was a man who held affectionate one-sided conversations with the cat, then kept up a bad pretense of ambivalence towards her when people were watching him. He disliked mornings, cooked meals with a lot of potatoes in them, slept a lot and still always seemed a little tired. He let children demand endless music of him, and seemed to find that music natural even outside of his magic, his endless mental bank of songs becoming evident whenever he tinkered on his many hobbies and jobs. People spoke about him as if his habits were a totally predictable constant in their lives. He was a normal person who presumably found this just as awkward as Reynir did.  
  
It wouldn't be today, but soon, he would make another effort. He would still be behaving himself, if he just got the two of them relating like people who were sharing a room and working together. They were both regular humans just trying to deal with an awkward situation, and this was all anyone could do. The last time they'd met had been absolutely awful, but before that Onni had been decent and even protective of Reynir, and his interactions with people here were much more like that. It was kind to assume the best, and Onni deserved some kindness.  
  
Reynir still hesitated for a long moment when, passing the toolshed a few days later, he heard Onni's voice floating over the tapping of hammer on steel. This was another song that sounded quite unlike the magic poems, lively and with half the words replaced by humming the tune. Reynir lingered outside the door, knuckle raised ready to knock. Onni hit on a bit that he clearly remembered all the words to, the hammer taps keeping their steady rhythm as he got into his singing.  
  
_"Ja jonakin aamuna, ennen sarastusta, huomaat että musta-"_  
  
Reynir tapped briefly to get Onni's attention then pushed the door in, leaving a square of light on the floor of the dimly lit shed. Onni was sitting in there, on a stool with a tree stump between his legs, the stump embedded with a chunk of metal to work against. Reynir smiled. "Hey."  
  
Onni looked up from the sickle he appeared to have been peening the edge of, hammer grasped in one thickly-gloved hand. He just looked at Reynir, arranging his face into yet another expression of tiredness and annoyance. It was enough to make Reynir want to pretend he'd thought it was someone else in there, but this needed to be done.  
  
"What are you doing there?" Maybe he could ease into this conversation somehow.  
  
Onni sighed and held up the sickle. "I don't know what it's called, the word for this. Making it thin." He didn't try to explain further, returning to the little hammer blows that would make the tool ready to sharpen. Reynir had definitely noticed this was a pattern among the people here, even those with very good Icelandic. Sometimes, Jaana or Laura would know words even Reynir didn't when it came to the terms of administration or science, but none of them had ever needed to learn the Icelandic for "sparrow" or "rolling pin". Farm work, domestic work, and things in nature were all topics that often left people hunting for a word they'd never needed in this language before.  
  
"Oh, yeah, I see now. Getting ready for summer?"  
  
"Lots of things to get from the forest, even now."  
  
"Oh. Neat."  
  
Onni didn't reply to that one, so Reynir kept standing in the door, trying to think of something that would keep the conversation going. "Do you have to scythe everything here?"  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"Do you have to use the scythe to make all the feed and harvest all the crops?" Reynir pointed at the couple of examples of that very tool hanging on the wall. He knew that Finland had much less access to mechanisation than Iceland, but he wasn't sure quite how bad it was.  
  
Onni looked up from his task and peered at Reynir as if trying to work out what he was asking. "Oh. No. There's... in the neighbours' farm, at the moment, a thing." This was clearly again entering the realm of topics Onni thought he'd never have to discuss in Icelandic. "We share it." He rolled his eyes up, sounding a little frustrated. "You're driving it, it picks grains, it also takes them from the sticks, it takes away-"  
  
"Combine harvester!" Reynir blurted it out the moment he realised what Onni was getting at, slightly too eagerly.  
  
"...Yes. That sounds like it would be the word for it." Onni started hammering again. "There is one of those, and most people close to here are getting turns. Much faster, except in the small fields. There, perhaps we're using scythe." This was many more words than Reynir had heard from him since arriving. Was this going well?  
  
Onni was finishing up the job, standing to put the hammer back in its place and starting to quickly go back and forth over the new edge with a stone. Reynir should probably say something soon, because he had decided he needed to get this done, and all leaving it would accomplish was several more days of it bugging him.  
  
"Um, so." Onni paused again at Reynir's newly strained tone, looking tense. "I guess stuff is still weird between us." Despite there being an abundance of competition for the title, that statement probably won the prize for least smooth topic shift Reynir had ever pulled off.  
  
The look of overbearing exhaustion returned, Onni's shoulders slumping and the sickle falling to his side. "What do you _want_ from me?" The phrase sounded like it was meant to carry some level of venom, but came out sounding more defeated than anything else. Reynir felt genuinely bad about inflicting this on him again. Onni's unhappiness made his own chest twinge with empathy, the sinking feeling weighing him down already, but he'd started it now.  
  
"I want to know how things are going." Onni looked incredulous. "And whether you're really okay with me being next to your room - "  
  
"It's fine." Onni said it before Reynir was even finished, automatically and without conviction.  
  
" - And to try to apologise again."  
  
Onni looked despairing. _"Why?"_  
  
"Because I still feel bad! And I know you feel bad too, and - and I want to try to - obviously I can't fix it but - but look! We have to live together, we can't just grunt at each other all summer, we have to deal with this." Reynir started to run out of steam, feeling very awkward now that his moment of assertiveness had ended. He still kept his head up, ready to make eye contact with Onni if he ever stopped staring at the wall.  
  
Onni's closed his eyes rather than do that, his face settling into a look of misery. "You want to know how I'm going."  
  
"Of course I do."  
  
"How I'm going since _when_? Since - since my sister died? Or since I'm spending five years getting over it and suddenly, there's coming some guy who -" He trailed off as, whether for language-related or personal reasons, he stopped being able to find the words for what he meant. Once again, Reynir's heart ached at the inarticulate waving of Onni's hands and his attempts not to sound pleading, a lump rising in his throat and making it hard to look at him. He felt slightly bad for also feeling a touch of relief. Onni was upset, but wasn't reacting with the same violent rage he'd had last time. Reynir hadn't truly expected that he would, given that prior to then he'd almost always come off as more resigned than anything else, and it had been an awfully long time. It had still been a mild worry.  
  
"I know I shouldn't have lied to you." It wasn't really an answer, but it was what Reynir had to say.  
  
"Why did you do it then?" Onni had opened his eyes, but was staring very intently at the floor, the expression of grief making Reynir dearly wish he could be a source of comfort rather than more pain.  
  
"I didn't want to upset you!"  
  
"What did you think could happen? What, she gets better from miracle and I never find out?" Reynir winced. There had definitely been some element of denial to his damage control. He knew enough about the world now to start realising that even being able to feel doubt about what happened when people were infected was a symptom of his unusually safe upbringing. This was another fact that didn't really make him feel good about himself.  
  
"I wasn't thinking." Reynir leaned against the door, hugging himself. "I'm an idiot, and I didn't want to make it real, and I - I'm sorry." This must have been the fifth or sixth time he'd voiced an apology. Onni still wouldn't look him in the eye, which seemed fair at this point.  
  
After that, the silence stretched out. The slightly comical sound of the rooster crowing in the background felt like an inappropriate incursion on the moment. Onni's grip was tight on the handle of the sickle, his head down. He looked even more profoundly exhausted than ever.  
  
"You can stay in the attic. And talk to me. If you need to. If it's something normal." Onni sounded mechanical, his jaw tense.  
  
Reynir nodded. "Okay." He took a breath. "Normal is what I want. Nothing else. I promise."  
  
"Are you done?" Onni picked up the whetstone again, his voice tight, blinking and very obviously keen for Reynir to leave.  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry, see you at um, dinner maybe." Reynir started to back out, pulling the door behind him. Before he could close it completely, Onni spoke again.  
  
"Did you really feel bad for five years?"  
  
Reynir put his head back through the door to find Onni finally directing his gaze towards him, the unexpected eye contact daring him to even try lying again.  
  
"Yes. Often."  
  
Onni held his gaze for a moment, then looked back towards the sickle. "Oh." The scraping noises of stone on metal began again.  
  
Reynir clearly wasn't getting any more than that, but this could have gone so much worse than it had, so he would take it. He had to put his shoulder against the door to make it shut totally, the snow on the ground stopping it from swinging freely into its frame. He did see Onni at dinner. There was no particular occasion for them to speak to each other, but Reynir was more than willing to give this time. They had a lot of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Onni, soita! Ööö... ole hyvä ja soita." - a demand to play, then a self-correction to ask politely
> 
> "Soita uudelleen!" - Play again!
> 
> The first song is an old Finnish nursery rhyme about a troll and a sunbeam - "Päivänsade ja Menninkäinen"
> 
> The second song is not a "traditional" Finnish song, but is enough of a dad-rock classic that I'm pretty sure if any Finns survived the apocalypse, this one would make it out with them - "Musta aurinko nousee".


	7. Part 2: Pearl Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Helmikuu" is the Finnish word for February, and it means "pearl moon/month". The meaning is simple - in February the light is coming back but the snow is still very thick, so all of nature shines like pearls. Google something like "luminen metsä helmikuussa" to see, if you don't live somewhere where February is like this.

Onni had been dreading Reynir attempting to talk to him again. It had seemed like such a cruel joke, having chance throw them into proximity. When the inevitable discussion had happened, it had been terrible, awkward and painful. If that hadn't been bad enough, his instinctive reaction to it made him feel like a fool. He'd been soft on Reynir before, and it had gone nowhere good. Letting him walk around wherever he wanted, accepting his excuse that he hadn't been told not to come back, allowing him to literally push Onni around when they'd crossed the water. Finally trusting that he was telling the truth, and having his heart broken. He'd let it all happen, and now he was probably going to do it again. The look on Reynir's face had been one of such genuine regret. Onni would need to work very hard not to be as big a pushover as last time.  
  
The thing was, he did sympathise with what Reynir had said. Onni might be able to project an ambivalent grumpiness at times, but it did affect him when people around him were sad, often more than he wished he did. Reynir hadn't known how to cope with something awful, and had acted badly, seeming to genuinely believe it had been out of character. As much as Onni felt a sick envy of anyone who could reach adulthood without knowing how these things worked - he would give anything to not have known too well by that age what infection meant - it just wasn't something you should hate another person for.  
  
Perhaps when he'd been younger he would have hated someone for it anyway, but there were many such people in the world, and keeping up that strong a feeling towards all of them was too exhausting. The world was tiring enough, the obligations neverending, the work never done. Onni had long learned to make sure he never had too much time on his hands, and the fact his habits left no mental energy to maintain a simmering resentment was one of the reasons. Hints of resentment still cropped up, often, but he couldn't even bring himself to do that in this case. When he'd said he really had regretted it all these years, Onni believed him. With the pain having found its settled place in Onni's mind now, it felt like it was time for this to stop.  
  
Still, he kept up his guard. Reynir constantly tried to do things for him now, and at first it grated. The seeming implication that he might buy back Onni's respect with endless small favours - did he really think any of this touched the gravity of what he'd lied about? - seemed to be just insulting. It didn't stick, though, because now that he was paying more attention he noticed Reynir was like this with absolutely everybody. He brought Jaana drinks while she looked over the Icelandic homework the neighbours' sons had done for her. He pre-emptively got things off the high shelves if Sanna might need them. He listened politely and made his best interested noises when the kids tried to show him things, despite clearly understanding very little of it. In the waking world, he clearly had a far better idea of how to behave towards other people.  
  
He worked hard, and he was useful at what he'd come here to do, and he thought of other people all the time. Damn it, he just wouldn't stop being nice, constantly and unselfconsciously nice. When Reynir saved Onni some of the pancakes he'd slept through someone making one morning, he ate them, because they were nice too. Reynir picked them off the high cupboard top he'd hidden them on and handed them over, smiling awkwardly but genuinely. It was nearly impossible to keep looking like an unapproachable, ambivalent grump while this happened. Onni tried anyway, crossing one arm over himself as he leaned against the counter and jabbed at the pancakes with a fork, the thanks he mumbled through his mouthful of food very quiet.  
  
The fact that Jaana seemed to find Reynir delightful was something that made Onni pause. Miri liked him and his insistence on washing up so often, too. Onni had decided long ago that he didn't really want to know exactly how things had been for his sister before she died, his worrying mind already inventing too many horrors with the minimal detail he had. He remembered, though, that one day after finally befriending Emil he'd realised he was glad this was one of the friends she'd had out there. With that in mind, he couldn't ignore how Tuuri's old friends - so similar to her in many ways - were embracing Reynir. When he allowed himself to think about it, he had to conclude that of course she would have liked him, too.  
  
It made Reynir's assertion that he hadn't wanted any of it to become real just that little bit closer to Onni's heartstrings. Despite the fear of being hurt again, sure that it must be against his better judgement, he stopped making an effort to close it off when Reynir spoke to him. The thanks became slightly more voiced, and the arms just a tiny bit less tightly crossed. Reynir kept treating him exactly the same way he was treating all the others, and it wasn't so bad.  
  
"Onni, can I ask you something?" Reynir had found him when Onni came out to help with the evening feed, the two of them working to carry the bales that half the household found a little too big.  
  
"I can't stop you."  
  
"Um. Okay?" Reynir seemed to take that as a total rejection rather than an attempt to be cagily sarcastic. Onni was still never sure about how well he could pull that off in Icelandic. While Reynir arriving was already getting his use of it back into practice, he still felt very clumsy.  
  
"Also, you _may_ ask."  
  
"Ah! Right." He had definitely missed the sarcasm the first time. "Yeah, um, could you maybe help me with some magic stuff? I want to put some runes on the trees, to kill anything bad that's coming. If that's okay. If it's not interfering with any of your magic."  
  
Onni thought they'd been through this. "I don't know anything about your magic."  
  
"I know! I just need to know where to put it. To make it work best. I've had training now, I know how to install security."  
  
"Ah. Ask Lalli what happens in the woods. He knows best." Onni did go there often himself, of course, but he didn't actively seek out the paths of any invaders in the way Lalli did.  
  
Reynir dumped his bale of hay down, then shrugged. "I can't."  
  
Onni remembered that of course he couldn't. He'd almost forgotten, with how well Lalli was avoiding Reynir, that their communication issues weren't entirely voluntary. "I'll ask him."  
  
That conversation with Lalli had been interesting. Lalli apparently had seen Reynir's runes and remembered them very well. They were useful, he said. No question about it. He acknowledged without prompting that would be no logic in failing to assist their placement, even if he had nothing but disdain for Reynir himself. But if Reynir wanted to pick the spots where danger was most likely to come, he would need to wait. These things varied year by year, and come the spring he'd know more. Going through the woods wasn't the easiest now, anyway. Lalli promised to let him know when it could happen, and Onni relayed the information to Reynir as directly as he could.  
  
"I wonder if he's just trying to avoid me for longer." Reynir was looking out the kitchen window, wiping a circle in the fog to peer more clearly at the thickly snowbound woods, when Onni found him.  
  
"I think he would take a walk with anyone for a safer house." Onni wondered how someone could know Lalli for any length of time and truly think he would compromise that kind of task for a personal grudge. As hard as he'd been on Lalli sometimes when they were both younger, he couldn't actually imagine him intentionally neglecting what he thought was correct to do.  
  
"You're probably right. I'll wait." Reynir kept gazing at the woods in the distance, his chin in the palm of his hand, his eyes glazing over as he fell into a light reverie of contemplation. Onni had been happy to let the conversation end here. While this seemed like productive work, it was just work, and there was no need to drag it out.  
  
The first time Onni started the conversation himself was during the mid part of the month, one of the first evenings he would have said were starting to seem bright again after the winter's deep dark. While the light was growing, the cold was still deeply settled in and only getting more bitter. Another freezing low turned the trees outside to their purest white, and the pleasant whirring of the wheel in Reynir's corner went on for less time every evening. Coming upstairs earlier than usual, Onni finally decided to ask him about it.  
  
"Don't you want to do that downstairs, where it's warmer?"  
  
"Oh, no. It's nice to have a little alone time and give people their space." There was the little smile again, the one Reynir seemed to give people almost reflexively, flashing up at Onni before Reynir's eyes went back to the fleece that was rapidly becoming yarn.  
  
"Your fingers will freeze."  
  
Reynir stopped pedalling, let the whirring die and held up a hand. "I have some gloves."  
  
"Fingerless ones." Onni wove between the bags of fleece that littered the attic and came to stand in front of the wheel, crossing his arms. "You can't be warm enough."  
  
"I am for now." Yarn wasn't Onni's expertise. About all he knew how to make was socks, and even that was a very rusty skill compared to sewing and carving all manner of other things. He could see Reynir's spinning was very good, though, consistent and fine. Onni watched it be produced and spool around the wheel, the speed and quality of it impressive. And Reynir's fingers so clearly ready to go numb.  
  
Onni went into his room. His dented little portable stove had been heating it since the early evening, and he would have let it die soon anyway. It was a little awkward to carry when currently working, but he put his gloves back on to grasp the handles and took it over to Reynir, placing it down carefully by the wheel.  
  
"Careful when you touch that, it's very hot." He turned towards his room again, ready for this to be the end of their interaction.  
  
"Oh! Are you sure?"  
  
Onni looked back at him. "You'll get cold hands. It's not sensible."  
  
Reynir let the spinning stop again, looking from the stove to Onni. While he'd quickly picked up the habit of warming his bed in the same way others here did, with some object heated in the fire between the sheets, he still had to keep a lot of layers on for his "alone time" spinning. It made his slenderness stand out, somehow. The fact his delicate-looking fingertips emerged first from the sleeve of a jumper, then the thick half-fingers of his gloves, made them seem so thin. Clearly, they were ready to be taken by frost at any time.  
  
"Well, thank you! That's sweet of you to do." Reynir once again gave that little smile before starting to pedal again. Onni huffed reflexively at the praise, re-crossing his arms. Of course he'd noticed this needed doing. He had partly raised Lalli, and knew how cold such skinny people could get very fast. It was _sensible,_ not _sweet_.  
  
"Just leave it by the door in the morning." Onni barely felt the cold, anyway. This wasn't much, and it would have made sense to do it for anyone. As he shut his door behind him, Onni looked back to see Reynir moving the stove as close as he could manage without risking the wheel or fleece. The long hum of Reynir working was a noise Onni had always enjoyed having in the background, no matter who was making it. When it continued further into the night than usual, it did make going to sleep just a little easier.


	8. Chapter 8

The neighbour family did really seem like a nice bunch, but interacting with them was so awkward. Teppo and Maija - he was pretty sure he had those names right, now - had even more children than Reynir's own parents, all near-identical sons with near-identical names that he struggled to tell apart. Neither parent spoke a word of Icelandic, and the Icelandic of their sons was a patchy mess of things Jaana had taught them in the past year. Jaana's complaints about only getting to see them about it once a week seemed justified, because none of them could really hold down a conversation with Reynir at all. He tried his best when he was hauled out to talk to the seven boys stuffed into the kitchen, and Jaana claimed it did help them to finally have someone who couldn't reply to them in Finnish, but he still had only the barest impression of any of their personalities.  
  
It wasn't as if Reynir could complain, though. If he answered the door when one of the boys' parents came to bring them something, he had to just stand there and try to communicate with them in vague gestures. He'd forgotten how difficult it was to get through a total language barrier, and how totally useless it made you feel. Lalli keeping such a distance and Emil always being so busy made the problem avoidable except for this. One day, in the hour or so before he knew one of them was going to turn up again, he found himself alone in the kitchen with Jaana and made another effort to cram some phrases into his mind.  
  
"So how many ways are there to say hello in this language anyway?" Reynir peered out the window again, watching the bit of path he could see for signs of someone appearing with the milk bucket.  
  
Jaana stood up from where she'd been bent over, checking the bread in the oven. "Yes, almost done! Er, a few. _Moi, hei, terve, päivää, moro, morjens, morjesta_..."  
  
"I have not heard even half of these. Or I think I haven't heard them?" It wasn't as if he could even tell very well when one word ended and another began, when listening to a stream of Finnish.  
  
"I've mostly heard the last three from my grandparents to be honest, and saying _hei_ will be perfectly fine, I think you can remember - oh! Emil!"  
  
Emil sped into the kitchen, looking like he intended to just hand Tuuri back and then leave again, but caught sight of the bread in the oven and bent over to check it himself. When he saw how nearly ready it was, he sat down at the table and started staring at it, clearly hoping for some of it while it was fresh. Jaana began to chat to him, half-addressing her toddler as she did so and poking at the tear in her clothes that Emil was pointing out. Reynir still didn't really know what to say to Emil, and asking for simple pleasantries to be translated felt weird, so he just waited for them to get through their conversation. Emil was tucking into the bread, slightly squishing the loaf in his efforts to get warm slices off it, when Reynir started quizzing Jaana again.  
  
"What if I want to ... I don't know, meet someone later. How do I tell them I'll meet them?"  
  
_"Tapaan sinut."_  
  
Reynir repeated it back. _"Tapan sinut."_ That wasn't too hard, or so he thought.  
  
Jaana looked like she was trying not to giggle. "No, that means 'I'll kill you', not 'I'll meet you'. Listen, _tapaan_ \- "  
  
Emil had been looking between them, clearly understanding nothing but watching them chat anyway, throughout the whole interaction. When Reynir and Jaana started a back and forth of her repeating the word and Reynir trying to get the length right, Emil did finally catch on to what they were talking about. His laughter didn't exactly seem mocking, and the expression he made at Reynir seemed to be in a weird place between sympathetic and very entertained by the accidentally murderous-sounding mispronounciation.  
  
_"Välkommen till helvetet."_ While Reynir did not speak a word of Swedish, he was very sure he didn't need that one translated. He was starting to see why some people claimed Swedish and Icelandic were similar, given that he never had anything like this with Finnish.  
  
"Um, thanks." Even if he'd understood it, Reynir didn't really know what to do with the expression of what he supposed was sympathy.  
  
_"Varsågod?"_   Emil looked surprised to even get a response.  
  
Jaana watched this interaction with interest. "Have you two actually caught up yet?"  
  
"I'm not sure how we're meant to do that. I mean, I know I can ask you, but it feels weird to just ask you to translate a whole long, normal conversation."  
  
"I would if you wanted me to."  
  
"Hmm." Now that Reynir had the opportunity, he wasn't even sure what he would ask if he could. He was saved from trying to work it out by Emil noticing a man coming down the road, large lidded bucket in hand. Teppo had come himself this week, and Reynir remembered how half the house reacted to this. Jaana and Emil's back-and-forth ended with Emil getting up to go greet the man, while Jaana stared out the window, looking entertained.  
  
"Reynir, come watch." Jaana was giggling slightly at the sight of Emil's awkward conversation with the obliviously affable farmer. None of their conversation could be made out through the thick layers of the window, even if Reynir had spoken Finnish, but Emil appeared to mostly be nodding very obligingly at the older man's vague rambling and gesturing. Teppo clapped Emil on the shoulder and threw him slightly off balance, and Jaana snorted.  
  
"Does he know you all call him 'Hot Teppo'?" Reynir did see what they all meant, and it was kind of comforting to know that people here were just as easily entertained as the ones back home. In Finland just as much as Iceland, finding reasons to stare at the neighbours started to count as a hobby once the winter went on for long enough.  
  
"No. Hopefully it stays that way. Emil would die of embarrassment, probably."  
  
By the time the milk was actually in, Reynir had forgotten that they'd even been discussing trying to get him and Emil talking, but Jaana started the topic up again as soon as she could. Her chatting at Emil did prompt some questions from his side, and once they got a flow going of translating back and forth, they collectively got a patchy handle on filling Emil in on how Reynir had spent the last few years. Reynir couldn't remember exactly, but he was pretty sure this was the first totally normal conversation they'd ever had.  
  
"He wants to know more about the magic school."  
  
"I thought Swedish people didn't acknowledge the gods - wait, you don't have to translate that part."  
  
"They usually don't live in Finland, with three Finnish mages, either." Jaana addressed him directly with a slight smirk of amusement.  
  
"Oh! Right. Erm..."  
  
It turned out that Emil clearly did acknowledge some gods, and had quite a lot of questions about what Reynir had learned. Reynir could tell him that yes, it was generally held that the gods of the Icelanders also watched over the Swedes, and all the same rules should apply to him. The fact Emil had clearly been casually existing alongside the Finnish magic for some time, but had no idea about even the most basic aspects of the gods that should actually be watching him, was a bit strange to think about. Reynir had once been quite ignorant about them for an Icelander, but he'd still had some sense of who the gods were and what layers there were to the world besides the Midgard they all walked on now. Emil had never even realised there were afterlives possible for him besides the Valhalla he'd heard Sigrun talk about.  
  
Jaana was learning plenty as well. "Weird that you describe it all as a big tree, when Icelanders always seem to act like they've never seen a forest in their life." Emil said something else. "And why didn't you do anything with the military? He says he heard once that Icelandic military mages get to do all kinds of cool stuff."  
  
"Oh, well." There had been a few reasons for that. Reynir had never done amazingly well at the Academy, despite being assured on all sides he had great potential. He had always been kind of distractable, the type to break off mid-conversation because an interesting bird caught his eye or he remembered something that had happened three days ago. Having your attention go from place to place like that was a perfectly fine way to be when you were working with sheep, especially as you never really needed to remember what they needed, it was just _obvious_. Magic was obvious sometimes too, Reynir's intuition with it leaping forward in ways that he was told were very creative, but the kind of obvious it was didn't seem to make it easy to explain to a teacher. _"If you could just explain what you meant by 'I changed some stuff around', you'd be doing really well"_ was something Reynir had heard a lot of times during the training.  
  
It hadn't been all bad. In an academy decked by images of Freya and the ancient seers wielding their symbolic distaff, nobody minded him bringing a spindle to class once he worked out that having something twisting in his hands helped him concentrate. Once he took the suggestion of being tracked into doing spinning spells, he'd been very good at them. There were still always gaps afterwards, though. He never quite got the knack of listening for the full duration of a lecture on history or runecraft, and having to sit still for a three-hour exam on it was even worse. Still, they'd been quite understanding, once Reynir had complained a couple of times about struggling to organise his thoughts neatly enough. A nice lady had given him a form to fill in to get extra time doing the exams. The morning of his finals, he'd looked at the folded bit of paper he'd been using as a coaster for three months and remembered he was meant to have filled in and returned that. Whoops.  
  
As much as the military track valued practical skill, of which Reynir had plenty, they did require some measurable score for any "cool stuff". Really, it was probably for the best. The fact he'd by some standards greatly under-achieved didn't really bother Reynir that much. His mum had still put his graduation certificate on the wall with a tear of pride in her eye, and he was awful at following orders without asking endless questions about them anyway, and he would have missed working with sheep. He explained to Jaana that he just didn't seem to be very good at exams or taking orders, and both those things were kind of important if you wanted to do the stuff Emil was thinking of. Jaana had seemed a little surprised that it was that regimented.  
  
"I just can't - see, I _know_ Icelanders study magic as an academic subject, but I can't really conceptualise it. We don't do it like that here at all."  
  
"Do you not?" Come to think of it, Reynir had no idea where he would even expect the Finnish magic school to be, if there was one.  
  
"It's a family thing here. Usually. Sanna had to learn from someone outside her family, but she was still someone local to her at the time."  
  
 "Huh." Emil piped up, demanding to know what they were talking about now, and Jaana started filling him in. This wasn't the first thing Reynir had been surprised to learn about Finnish magic. From some offhand remarks he'd heard, he'd gleaned that it actually wasn't considered unusual for men to be mages in Finland. Of course, in Iceland the days of male mages being socially tarred with _ergi_ had been left in the First Viking Age, but it still seemed that the gods favoured women with the sight far more often. He'd been one of only a small handful of men in his class. The fact there was no such division in Finland wasn't weird, exactly, but it was odd to realise that Lalli and Onni had none of the same social connotations to their work as Reynir did.  
  
"Emil wants to know what you even do at magic school. And if there are any really weird spells."  
  
Well, this was a topic Reynir could entertain lay people with for hours. Even other Icelanders were sometimes moved to grim intrigue by the more obscure things their mages did. It did bring home how little he knew about Emil's sense of humour when he started describing the procedure for _nábrók_ and met only a look of dawning horror. Jaana was almost as disgusted as Emil was, and Reynir rushed to clarify, holding his hands up to avert their looks of worry. "Look, I haven't personally flayed anyone, dead or alive, and I think most mages will never make a pair of those - it's just a thing we had to learn about - you know." He got a better reception drawing out a little pile of runes on a nearby bit of paper and declaring that they formed the "cat recipe" he'd learned about in his first year. They were the ones that looked like hairy little rectangles, far less pleasing than the grandiose circles of the bigger spells. Tuuri, who had been flailing onto the table trying to finally investigate Reynir, immediately screwed up the paper into a loose ball and threw it to an unseen corner of the room.  
  
"Oops. Anyway, if you put that rune in a cat's mouth, the cat becomes pregnant. We just call it the "kittenfiller", it's a handy one."  
  
"Do cats not usually deal with that themselves, if you put them near enough other cats?" Jaana asked Reynir this, then translated the new fun fact for Emil. He looked just as quizzical about the spell's usefulness as she did, although his expression was a little hard to read now with Tuuri grabbing on his face as she reached him and started to climb.  
  
"Well, yeah, but it's super useful with the military cats! If you've got a really grade A cat, you get kittens exactly the same as them from this, like - they used to send the first-year students down to the cat-breeding facility with bits of rune-covered paper and little balls of mincemeat, and make us do the magic cat impregnating as 'practical work' - trying to get them to eat the paper was actually really difficult..."  
  
Jaana's translation of that, complete with a few indicative gestures, made Emil giggle quite a lot. "He says he still finds it really funny when magic is used for something that boring and weird. I guess if you grow up with it being some kind of mystery, it might seem funny." It was a moment that made Reynir feel suddenly very glad he'd gone traveling again, and even that he'd ended up in such a weird social situation. Not only was he learning a lot out here, he was actually getting to turn the strange acquaintanceship he had with Emil into a proper introduction. Watching him gently fend off Tuuri's grabby hands as he stuffed a final slice of bread in his face, Reynir did his best to think of more fun anecdotes about the more offbeat bits of Icelandic magic. Emil did end up laughing at quite a few more of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Emil tells Reynir "welcome to hell", Reynir says "thanks", and Emil says "you're welcome?", the first two things are nearly identical in Swedish and Icelandic but the third is, I think, less so. 
> 
> Reynir's brief mention of the gender imbalance in Icelandic magic refers to how things worked in the Viking Age. Then, there was a taboo on men practicing witchcraft, which was seen as a feminine activity. If a man was called "ergi", a term leveled at men who practiced such effeminate acts, he was legally obliged to fight the accuser because to accept the insult would be just proving the other man right. Even Odin was mocked by Loki in the old epics for having learned his witchcraft from Freya. Since SSSS-Iceland is a cultural descendant of modern Iceland, where gender equality is closer to becoming real than in most other places, I imagine the old taboo of "ergi" has not become an issue for Reynir. In modern Scandinavia, Ásatrú (the closest relative of old Norse religion) is also fairly gender-blind in its practice. My reading, though, is that the fact that female seers were so much more attested is also partly due to an imbalance in who the gods pick.
> 
> The "cat recipe" is a legitimately attested old Icelandic spell. In our world it's both weird and useless as a thing to try to use magic for, but in a universe where you might have very good reason to clone particularly high-grade cats it might suddenly become very useful! The "nábrók", sometimes calqued as "necropants", are also a recorded old spell (although it is debatable whether anyone actually made them). To make nábrók you need to get the agreement of a friend with a scrotum, wait till said friend dies, then dig their body up and flay the skin off it from the waist down to make a pair of leggings. You put the leggings on and put a coin stolen from a widow in the now-empty skin of the scrotum, and thus attract great wealth. Isn't it good that Siv and Torbjörn weren't Icelandic mages who would think to use a series of these for their money-making scheme?


	9. Chapter 9

Despite how stressful the first few days with Reynir around had been, Emil was really starting to appreciate him. The difference between Reynir here and Reynir in a constant combat situation was so stark, it was almost like being around a different person. Seeing how good he was at what he did here really gave a context to the flailing persona Emil had first known him by, one which cast it all in a totally different light. Reynir knew exactly what he was doing with sheep and around the house, and the Icelandic speakers all appeared to find him perfectly personable. Emil felt a little bad, now, for assuming that the lack of competence Reynir had given off before was truly reflective of him. The fretting and weird behaviour made sense now. Of course Reynir had gotten incredibly stressed by feeling useless, because here in his element, he was useful nearly every moment of the day.  
  
Miri had gushed to Emil about the sample of lace Reynir had whipped up for her after one of their long conversations about their craft. "Emil, look at this. He made a whole thing like this for his sister-in-law's bridal veil, would you believe it?". Emil had not been able to comment in nearly as much detail as she had, but he could see that it seemed impressive, and Miri clearly found their chats delightful. Jaana, too, had started immediately looking for Reynir after she'd been sat down writing for too long. After cracking her back and her usual complaint of "Gods, I need a shoulder rub!", she would follow with a shout of " _Reynir!_ ", summoning him to come do her the favour. "I almost feel bad for asking him so often, but he's good at them and so _obliging_ about it... can we keep him?".  
  
Lalli still wouldn't talk to him, of course. Emil had noticed, though, that he didn't make quite so much of an effort now to be sure they were never in the same room. Reynir had eyed Lalli with worry the first few times he'd come to sit in a common space at the same time as him, but their existence together was approaching normalcy. When they were sitting together in the kitchen one day, Reynir providing the background noise by doing the dishes for everyone yet again, Emil tried to gently poke the topic. "So I heard you and Reynir might be going out into the woods to do some protection magic in a month or so."  
  
"Mm." Lalli hadn't actually been acknowledging Reynir's presence up till that point, and continued to keep his eyes on the wall rather than their guest.  
  
"It sounds like he's being pretty useful."  
  
"He's kind of useful for some things. Not that useful. I still don't know why Laura had to invite him over." Lalli finally deigned to look in Reynir's direction, his expression revealing no change in mood. Emil knew that Lalli did know exactly why Laura had wanted an experienced person around, and why she'd asked a friend she already knew she liked to talk to, so this rehashing was more to do with Lalli's ongoing grump than anything else.  
  
"Well, the lambs are coming soon. He'll help with that. Remember how busy Laura was last year-"  
  
"I could do that. It doesn't look too hard." Lalli folded his arms and leaned back.  
  
"I mean, you're basically putting your hand inside them, you should probably know what you're doing."  
  
"It's easy enough when I do it to _you_."  
  
_"Lalli!"_  
  
" _What?"_ Lalli looked at Reynir, who had spun around looking worried at the sudden change in tone. "He can't understand what I'm saying." Lalli gesturing at Reynir when he said this just made Reynir’s face fall even further.  
  
" _I_ don't want to understand you saying that! _Ew!_ " Emil knew the scandalised act would only encourage Lalli and take them totally off topic, but he couldn't resist finishing what Lalli had started here.  
  
Lalli's eye grew a glint as he smirked and pushed it. "I think the sheep probably doesn't like it as much, but it's still _basically_ the same - "  
  
"Don't make me link those two things in my mind! Ugh, I'm never touching you again!" Lalli's half-smile cracked into a grin for a brief moment. "I should leave you for Hot Teppo.” Lalli’s eyebrow rose. “You watch, I will. I bet he wouldn't compare me to a birthing sheep." Reynir had started staring at the two of them as their interaction escalated into melodrama, looking increasingly worried by Emil's affected horror.  
  
"Mm, I think you'd have a bad time." Lalli paused, putting on a slight facade of concern. "His wife always looks so bored."  
  
"Lalli." Emil was struggling very hard not to laugh, but was miles worse at the deadpan act than Lalli. "That - that is incredibly rude. And I think that's just Maija's face. I mean, they have seven kids - "  
  
_"And yet."_  
  
Emil finally snorted and started to cackle. "You're awful."  
  
"Probably. Still, I wouldn't risk it, if I were you." Lalli's tone was still nearly indistinguishable from that of serious advice.  
  
"Ugh, I guess I am stuck with you then, being like _this_ forever - "  
  
Sini wandered into the kitchen and Reynir asked her something. She addressed Emil and Lalli with concern. "Guys? He wants to know if you're laughing at him."  
  
"Oh. No." Emil realised rather late how this might look. "No, we're laughing about - about" - Lalli actually cackled at Emil's awkward response - "nothing."  
  
Sini didn't seem to totally believe them, and nor did Reynir, but Emil wasn't about to repeat their entire conversation. Lalli continued to smirk to himself about what they'd been saying, once again ignoring Reynir and the sad-puppy looks he was giving the two of them. While Reynir's reaction to being excluded made Emil feel kind of bad, the fact Lalli was willing to mess around with him there was a good sign. Lalli's day was clearly not being ruined by the mere sight of him anymore, and trying to make Emil laugh at his observations was always indicative of a decent mental state. Emil knew that the more weird or inappropriate the shared thought, the more happy Lalli probably was. Maybe this was the start of some progress. When Emil continued their conversation later in the day, Lalli's responses to his questions weren't great, but they weren't terrible either.  
  
"So I guess you don't feel like you need to talk about Reynir?"  
  
"What is there to talk about?"  
  
"Well, the fact you hate him."  
  
"He's annoying but he's not doing anything terrible right now."  
  
"Right."  
  
"You like talking to him now, don't you." Lalli's tone wasn't exactly accusatory, but nor was he particularly pleased about this.  
  
"Honestly, yeah. He's nice." Lalli let out a long-suffering sigh at Emil's response. "Really, he is!"  
  
"Everyone thinks he's nice." Lalli huffed. "Even Onni's talking to him all the time." He sounded genuinely a bit put out by that one. It was true. Despite his taciturn outer personality, Onni was regularly engaging in conversation with their excitable newcomer. Emil had been slightly surprised to see it himself, the way Onni allowed Reynir to follow him around, helping with such a wide variety of the tasks he set himself. Their shared set of farm-boy skills did give them a lot to work on together, so perhaps that was the appeal.  
  
"For what it's worth, I think that's just because they have to live so close to each other."  
  
"Poor Onni." Lalli looked both sincere in his sentiment and very ready to move on. "Can we talk about something else?"  
  
Emil didn't see the point of dragging this out. Lalli was right that there was nothing really requiring the two of them to talk, and now that Lalli's routine had slightly adjusted to make it even easier to avoid Reynir, the situation didn't seem to pain him particularly. It still wasn't nice, knowing that Lalli was having to blank out someone who would be there for many months yet. It didn't seem healthy or fun. If there was one thing Emil knew, though, it was that making Lalli feel pushed about it would only backfire horribly. "Yeah, of course."  



	10. Chapter 10

"So, Onni."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
Reynir was standing off to the side of Onni as he worked, ankle deep in snow again despite this being one of the areas he tried to keep clear, once again re-assembling the ill-fated still that lived behind the woodshed. From a safe distance, Janne was watching the two men work, wide-eyed and rugged up in the very thickest clothes he owned. Reynir was used to this by now. One of the things Emil the others had communicated to him was that if he could, he should really try to welcome any interest from this boy.  
  
"Where did these kids come from?"  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
Reynir had been watching the two older children, especially Viivi, follow Onni and Emil around for the whole month he'd been here. Still, he was no closer to working out exactly what their family situation was. "You know, Viivi and Janne. You and Emil look after them."  
  
"Mostly, yes."  
  
"But they're not yours or his, right? Am I wrong?" It seemed implausible to Reynir that Emil would have been on that mission, if he'd had kids of this age. They would have been so small at the time. While it was totally possible that they were the product of some past relationship of Onni's, or that Onni just hadn't mentioned being able to make them himself, Reynir was pretty sure he'd gathered they weren't biological relatives.    
  
"You are correct."  
  
"So where did they come from?"  
  
Onni sighed. "I guess it's time for you to know. Reynir, when two people - "  
  
"Oh, you know what I meant! These _specific_ children." Reynir had started to be able to tell when Onni was starting with the sarcasm, and it turned out that this was often.  
  
"Emil found them. They don't have parents." Onni's tinkering led to something falling off rather than sticking on where it should. _"Voi perkele."_  
  
The explanation was disconcertingly vague, but that did sound like something Emil would do. Reynir remembered how the cat had happened to them, and this eventually happening too seemed like a pretty logical conclusion of Emil being like that. The word "found" was a bit of a strange one, but maybe they hadn't gotten around to re-introducing any kind of rigorous social service in Finland, and this was normal. Maybe they had, and Onni was just phrasing things oddly again. That potential can of worms didn't need to be opened right now. "So how did you end up being, you know."  
  
"I don't think I do know."  
  
"Their... second parent, I guess."  
  
"Raising children by yourself is lot of work. I think Lalli isn't any good at it, but I can do it." Reynir was quite sure the mild tone there was hiding a lot. He hadn't forgotten the answers to the endless questions he'd asked Tuuri-the-first about her childhood, and he'd been able to tell even then that she was glossing over some things. Come to think of it, it really hadn't sounded like they'd had the kind of services Reynir had grown up knowing about. Onni appeared to be moving on from the topic already. "Hey. Give me that." Reynir passed over the length of piping, feeling dubious about the still's future prospects.  
  
"Onni, I'm gonna be honest, I think it's worse every time you reassemble it."  
  
"Mm." Onni tried to jam the pipe into its place, clattering it about and finding it far too loose. "You are not wrong." Standing up and shoving his cold hands into his armpits, he nudged the whole contraption with his foot and watched several parts move that shouldn't have. "Let's try again tomorrow."  
  
Reynir was still slightly too happy about it every time Onni implied he expected to do things with him the next day. "Sure!" While he didn't mind hanging around to help, going inside was a very welcome idea by now. The sky was a bright, pale blue with only a few rippled white clouds dusting it, but despite the brightness the sun barely seemed to warm the air. Every tree was still coated with the same brilliant sparkling frost that had been on them for weeks, the snow dry enough with the cold to squeak when Reynir walked on it. The Finns seemed totally oblivious to how wildly beautiful it all was. Janne followed at Onni's heels, producing a few words which Reynir still couldn't understand at all.  
  
There were so many things about this sprawling family unit that formed a puzzle for Reynir, and the pieces were slow in appearing. After being told to try his best to respond to anything Janne instigated with him, Reynir had really started to notice the difference between him and the two girls. He just didn't show strong preferences towards people, like the ones Viivi showed to Emil or that Tuuri showed to her mother, nor did he seem to get the same joy from being showed attention. It wasn't as if he was totally antisocial or devoid of interest in things. Reynir had seen Sini teaching him to play the violin and Onni guiding his hands over the kantele. Being "found" couldn't have been nice, though.  
  
Really, there were a lot of people here whose stories, or even implied stories, tugged at Reynir's mind. Thinking about the things they said brought up all his most fretful tendencies. His mother had always compared him to the sheepdogs when as a small child, he'd run about and drag everyone who was home to the table to make sure they ate together. He'd never really grown out of the deep-seated desire to make sure that everyone around him was, in some broad sense, home for dinner. She'd always put it down to how far away everyone usually was, using the sight of little Reynir's fretting to land another guilt trip on his older siblings, but Reynir was pretty sure he would have been like this no matter how he'd grown up.  
  
Reynir couldn't help but kick himself when he realised that Onni was having the biggest effect by far. He knew full well that Onni was probably looking after himself, and seemingly had no desire to do more than work together, but every bit of new information he gleaned was like it was designed to catch his attention. The more time they spent together, the more Reynir saw flashes of the side Onni hid behind his gruffness, a fundamental softness dotted through with the marks of all kinds of past grief. The signs of it set Reynir off as surely as his own patterned whistles would have pricked up the ears of a well-trained herding dog. He mentally repeated his resolution to leave Onni alone, and the tone he had to take with himself was far too reminiscent of the one he'd have to take with that same hypothetical herding dog, were it pacing and whining outside a room it knew it wasn't allowed in.  
  
They were getting on fine, and there was no reason to try to push for anything else. Reynir carried the cat when they went to the woods together one day, the precaution barely necessary given how deeply snowbound the land was, but one they took anyway. Onni expressed a rare tolerance for small talk and an even rarer opinion on the world's workings when they discussed the cat curling into Reynir's coat, the same "Herr" Nilsson Onni let sleep in his bed every night. Onni prefaced his thoughts on Icelandic-led cat training standards with "no offense", but expressed them quite strongly all the same.  
  
"Honestly, I agree with you." Reynir scratched the head of the cat which was purring contentedly as Onni cut thin branches from a juniper. "I don't know why they charge so much for it either. Training them isn't that hard, and the assessments, I mean, you can tell how smart a cat is yourself."  
  
Onni had looked gratified by that, turning back to Reynir and taking the chance to elaborate. "I went to Mora once and heard people in Sweden pay hundreds to be told if their cat is stupid." The light cracking of tree harvesting was the only thing mixing with Onni's voice in the dead-silent forest. "In Finland, it's coming like this, you train your own cat and it works fine. In military though, it has to be the Icelandic standard, even though nobody really has time for it. It's stupid." He finished piling juniper branches into his basket, hefting it to feel the weight, then repeated his earlier statement. "No offense."  
  
"Er, none taken." Reynir found Onni perfectly relatable when he was expressing his conviction that animals were not something you usually needed experts for, certainly more relatable than plenty of his own countryfolk in Reykjavik had been. Despite the obvious differences in their backgrounds, there were some things they could definitely talk about, and talk they did as they kept working together for the rest of that day.  
  
Onni's branch-harvesting had turned out to be part of yet another booze-making exercise, this time a cooperative effort with the neighbours and in the service of a Finnish tradition Reynir had honestly thought was a joke the first time he'd heard about it. The notion of a wife-carrying contest was pretty fundamentally hilarious, and the fact that the prize was meant to be one's wife's weight in beer seemed to confirm slightly too many stereotypes about Finns for it to possibly be true. When Reynir had asked Jaana if they were all serious, she'd only clarified that "wife-carrying" was merely the traditional name for it, and that these days neither gender nor marital status were hugely important. "Laura and Sanna aren't married, but Laura won last year. It's a pity it was mostly because Sanna's so small, we got basically no beer out of it. Next year Emil needs to run faster, although I think Lalli doesn't weigh too much either..."  
  
In general, the traditions here were a bit more sensible than that. He had a poor handle on what exactly was going on when they appeased the various tonttus of the farm, but the rules were easy enough, and no stranger than those of the various fey things that had been part of life in Iceland. Washing in a sauna was something that took a little getting used to, but Reynir was definitely appreciative of how long the warmth stayed in your body afterwards. It was possible to walk back to the house barefoot through the snow, put your clothes on where you'd left them, and still feel warmer than you had before you'd taken the layers off. With the coldest part of the year showing no sign of letting up even as March drew closer, that was very good.  
  
After a month of life here, Reynir had found his place in the queue that formed after the twice-weekly warming, still not entirely sure what rules governed it but fine with the arrangement. Onni would go in with the two older children, then Emil and Lalli would have their turn. Reynir always took the chance then to unbraid his hair and do the long work of brushing the oil all the way through it. When Emil turned up in the kitchen to pick up the chamomile he'd brewed earlier and start rinsing his hair with it over the sink, Reynir would know the sauna was free and go himself. He'd done so today, and now he sat in the kitchen again, hair still drying over his shoulders. It was a pain to have it out for so long, but unless he wanted a core of ice in the centre of a permanently wet braid, this was necessary.  
  
As nice as the sauna was, it really did play havoc with the waves in his hair. Hip-length wavy hair did not seem to like being exposed to a ninety-degree steam room, and the bulk of it turned into a mess of ringlets and frizz, expanding sideways to twice its normal width. Viivi loved it. Reynir could feel her picking up wads of it behind him, making impressed noises at just how much of it there was. When she walked in front of him to look more, he tossed it forwards in front of his face, turning himself into a tower of hair for her. Her squeal of delight and mock-fear was exactly the reaction he'd expected, but he hadn't expected to move the curtain from in front of his face and see Onni had appeared in the doorway, Viivi continuing to squeal as she pulled at his clothes.  
  
_"Onni katso! Mörkö!"_ Whatever words she was mixing with her monster-claw hands and pointing, Onni clearly found them funny, because he took a long look at Reynir's fluffy hairpile and began to laugh. Viivi was encouraged enough to start a monologue involving a lot of pointing and squealing. Onni smiled at her antics, more broadly and genuinely than Reynir had yet seen him smile at anything, and the minimal progress towards normalcy Reynir had made in his head dissolved instantly into a mid-chest bloom of warmth that had nothing to do with the sauna. Onni leaning against the doorframe, still slightly pink and in his lighter clothes, then smiling was seemingly all it took to undo all that careful work.  
  
"She's saying you're like, ah. It's a character from some Finnish books. I can tell her to stop." Onni was mercifully oblivious to what Reynir was realising in front of him. Reynir smiled in response, truly hoping it came off as merely reassuring.  
  
"Ah, it's no problem! She's really sweet!" Reynir could tell his voice was slightly strained. Oh, no. He had been so sure he'd gotten over this.  
  
As he got into bed that night, Reynir realised he hadn't been wrong. He had perfectly well worked through his old attraction to Onni, in a sense. The face of a mysterious, curt dreamwalker was not the one that brought up these feelings. What made him blush and stammer was an Onni who played kantele and forked hay, who nodded approvingly at Reynir's most heartfelt back-country opinions. This was the Onni who helped a cousin's partner with his adoptive wards just because he knew it was hard to do it alone, who went to sauna and cut trees and moved his solid body through real space and time. Surely this was a huge overstep, wanting that rare smile of Onni's to be for him. Still, Reynir wanted that and Onni in general, and this time was even worse than the last. It was rare for much to disturb Reynir's early nights, but today, thoughts of Onni managed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was a kid, I had a kelpie/border collie cross that could always tell when people were sad and would pine until you gave him the chance to climb into their lap and try to lick their face. He was a big lanky boy so it was quite awkward, but still very sweet. He spent most of his days trying to keep every creature in the world in neat watchable groups, a handy habit when he was escorting wandering hens back into the pack, but just a recipe for him worrying when he tried to do it with humans who had their own ideas about where they wanted to walk. Maybe it's weird to project some of a literal sheepdog's character traits onto Reynir, but well, his fylgja is that Icelandic sheepdog.
> 
> Viivi is saying Reynir in hair-beast mode looks like the Groke.


	11. Part 3: Earth Moon, Cleansing Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Finnish word for March, "maaliskuu", comes from "maa" for "earth", referring to the fact that you should usually start seeing the earth under the snow again during this month. The word for April, "huhtikuu", comes from "huhta" for "cleared woodland", and refers to the fact that you'd do certain kinds of forest-clearing work during this month when the trees were still too wet to become an uncontrolled fire. I personally headcanon that the Finnish word for "Cleanser" is something to do with this word, because all the other Finnish terms I might otherwise come up with ("puhdistaja", etc) sound way too much like a "get your deposit back after a chain-smoking flatmate" type service.

Onni had really thought they would be harder, the feelings of giving in to Reynir following him around everywhere. It wasn't just Reynir's personality, the bubbliness, the willingness to chat on about nothing. That he could handle. While no conversation was good, a conversation he didn't have to do the work of carrying was the next best thing. He'd just had a certain experience when it came to foreigners who'd grown up with more safety, the one time he'd visited a place that had them. Knowing Emil in his earlier stages hadn't done anything but reinforce Onni's impression. Of course, Emil had learned how to act eventually, but it had clearly been a process. Reynir was from a place of such safety, surely he would have the same sort of thing wrong with him that the older Västerströms had.  
  
That thing was something Onni didn't like to think about much. The Västerströms had been so personally kind to him. Compartmentalising their wrongness away from how they'd treated him had been less like shelving things and more like splitting wood, the kind of violent wood-splitting you did when you needed to let out your anger. It had been a deep and disturbing wrongness, though, their willingness to sacrifice other families' safety for a return of their own family's excessive fortune. Had they been truly poor, Onni might have understood. He understood desperation, of course he did. But they'd had decent, useful work in front of them, work that left them fed and safe, and given it up for a mission nobody needed.  
  
Their priorities had filled Onni with such violent nausea, his reaction in total contrast to Taru's earnest belief in such "high-risk, high-reward" activities. Before he'd locked his feelings away in favour of dealing with everything else from that time, it had made him want to tear the luxury off their walls and scream at her for forgetting how things were meant to work. Onni had decided that living in those places, being from that position of luck, must be the thing that made people lose all perspective. He had expected this issue to come up eventually, and braced himself for the task of again suppressing some very fundamental things about how he saw the world.  
  
Reynir wasn't like that, though. He worked constantly, not out of some desire to acquire more than he needed, but because the work needed doing. Friendship with Reynir didn't require anything like the intense mental walling-off that his uneasy acquaintance with the Västerström couple had. Onni didn't know how to express that oddly specific relief, nor did he know why he was so relieved in the first place to find Reynir's everyday persona so close to normal. It was nice, though, that Reynir's chattiness really wasn't trying to get anything out of him. Onni was allowed to appreciate nice things, like how someone's straightforward handiness slotted into his day, or the attention of someone who just liked his company.  
  
Starting to invent things they could work on together was just a good use of time. Reynir wouldn't be here forever. Him being good company was just a bonus, when he was so handy and willing.  
  
It didn't require that much invention, anyway. They were together often. Reynir shivered as they moved from place to place, his lanky limbs letting all his heat go as surely as an open barn door. The coldest part of winter stretched for longer than it should have, the middle of March arriving with no sign of the deep freeze breaking. Snow got deeper, rather than lighter, even as the month went on. The earliest lambs came anyway, safe in the barn at least, although Onni worried as much as Laura about how much they'd all have to eat if the spring ended up as delayed as it might. Onni followed Reynir when he went to assist more sheep arriving in the world, and Reynir seemed happy with him holding the heads of the placid ewes while he rolled up his sleeves and got to work again.  
  
"There we go. There we go." Reynir talked to the ewes constantly while he did this, a distracted-sounding patter that Onni was sure the sheep barely paid attention to. It added to the air of calm gentleness Reynir had during this process, though, the way he crooned at them as he felt inside for another lamb's sticky fetlocks. "Oh and I've found it, aren't you a good and clever sheep?" Onni kept his hands on the sheep's neck as Reynir pulled the lamb's legs, getting himself lightly sprayed with dung as the lamb compressed its mother's rectum on the way out. As used as he was to dealing with animal shit, this was why Onni preferred to be on this end of the sheep during the lambing process.  
  
"Oh, you're all here, look at you!" Reynir was still talking, now to the lamb, shaking it out by its hind legs and rubbing the life into it with the towel he'd brought.  
  
"Is it healthy?" Onni let the ewe go so she could join Reynir's rubbing with her own licking, peering over at the new addition.  
  
"Absolutely perfect!" Reynir didn't just mean that it had the correct number of heads, his face lighting up at the sight of the ewe showing the lamb its due attention. He continued to sit with them for much longer than was necessary, as usual taking far more joy in sheep than Onni had thought was possible. Maybe that joy was why, even covered in sheep juices and flecks of dung, his face kept such an eye-catching glow in the indirect barn light. Onni stayed a while too, watching Reynir have his moment with the sheep. It probably wasn't too much to admit, if Onni let himself say Reynir's company was nice. Of course seeing him happy was even nicer.  
  
Onni did notice that Reynir liked his company too. Even given how he was with the others, Reynir was unusually thoughtful with him. It wasn't unwelcome, now they'd found this normalcy together. As a month of it passed, Onni sometimes started to be the one to instigate their conversations. Lalli saw Onni seeking out Reynir for his company, narrowed his eyes at him, responded to his blustering justifications with "Oh, so you think he's nice, too." Well, if Onni thought that, it wasn't any of Lalli's business.  
  
The most mundane and important things in the world were moving. It turned out the omens had, in their way, all been right. Both the signs of a long winter and a warm spring were going to come true, Onni was sure of it now. As March finally ended, some change in the wind brought a wave of warm days, and the light of the new sun woke up spirits in the air that all said hotter was on its way. Every mage here felt it, even the less magical people here noticing it brewing, and Onni could not bring himself to be pleased about what was coming. After a March where the temperature hadn't gotten above -10, a jump into any positive temperature felt like high noon in the worst of late summers. This feeling would fade, of course, but perhaps not in time to give him any real respite before the actual heat began.  
  
Still, the work continued, as it always did. In April, the sun finally shone down in the first real warmth any of them had known since last September. Onni hated it, as usual. He was built for winter. When he chopped wood in the shed, he felt distinctly grumpy about it, despite this usually being an activity he found quite therapeutic.  
  
"Onni? Miri made pulla, and I think you should come get some before it's all gone."  
  
Reynir had found him yet again, and the sight of him standing there in his draping tunic did lift Onni's mood. This was the first week Onni had really seen him without a thick wool coat. Waiting in the entrance as he was, the remaining tips of icicle still melting off the roof would be leaving their cold drips on him soon. Onni paused briefly in his task.  
  
"You'll get dripped on, there."  
  
"Oh, I suppose." Reynir always ducked instinctively as he came through a door, even one as high-roofed as this woodshed. The little habit had started to make Onni wonder if the buildings in Iceland were all really that low, and if Reynir even noticed that this was something he did.  
  
"It's far too warm." Onni continued the conversation as he worked. "It must be, what..."  
  
"Er, ten, twelve degrees?" Reynir looked around as if trying to find a thermometer, which Onni knew was fruitless. It did sound about right, though.  
  
"Double digits. Far too warm. If it were up to me I'd keep it below five the whole year." Onni was partly exaggerating his hatred of the summer, but only barely. After the winter, he always felt like he was being boiled alive by even these hints of spring. Taking his shirt off so continuing to chop would be a little more comfortable, he started work again and waited for Reynir's usual habit of holding up the conversation for two. Reynir stood there without saying a word, which seemed very unlike him, and when Onni looked up he noticed a strange expression on his face. "Reynir. Have you caught the sun?"  
  
"Oh! No, I don't think so." Reynir definitely looked a little dazed. "Am I um, disturbing your ah, wood-chopping?"  
  
"No, it's fine, stay here if you want." Onni couldn't see why Reynir would want to just stand around and watch him grunt and chop things, but the company was welcome as ever. Taking the water bottle he'd been drinking from, he poured it over his head to further cool himself down, making a satisfied noise at the feeling. Reynir was again silent as Onni chopped yet more wood, out of character enough to finally pique Onni's concern. "Look, are you alright? You're quite pink. It was very bright today."  
  
"Ah, yeah! I guess it was!" Even out of the direct sunlight, Reynir's poor state was only getting more obvious. Onni had heard it was very cloudy all the time in Iceland. It made sense that Reynir might fall foul of a clear sky like the one they'd had today.  
  
He walked over to touch Reynir's cheek, testing it for the signs. "Well, it's not bad sunstroke, I think, but you'd better go lie down."  
  
Reynir making a retreat allowed Onni's grump at the weather to return. Once the water he'd poured over himself dried on his skin, he was back to being warm. The weird spring coming wouldn't be good for the peas, with the heat due to come so soon after the ground became workable. And something about Reynir's presence was still a kind of distracting that niggled at Onni, despite his objective pleasantness, even through how helpful he was. Onni decided that the niggling feeling was, as usual, worry. Of course he worried about Reynir, because he worried about everyone. Going to check on Reynir later would at least deal with today's bout of it. Wiping his face with his shirt before putting it back on, Onni went to deal with the rest of the day's tasks, making a mental note to visit Reynir that evening.  
  
He found Reynir not in bed, but at his wheel again. In the warmer weather, he hadn't needed Onni's stove anymore, and had abandoned his fingerless gloves. The light wool sleeves of his tunic were pushed up to reveal delicate-looking wrists and forearms, pale as the melting snow from a winter of coverage but still spattered with more freckles than a baby deer's back. He looked much calmer than he had earlier, although he started when he saw Onni approaching with a glass of water. Onni held it out. "Drink this."  
  
"Oh! Um, thank you?"  
  
"You need to drink water when you have sunstroke." Onni felt sure Reynir must know that, even coming from somewhere it was always cloudy, but the quizzical look on his face perhaps said otherwise.  
  
"Sunstr- oh! Oh yes, ah. I'll make sure to do that." Reynir was being strange again, which made Onni feel like his earlier diagnosis must have been correct.  
  
"Don't work too hard tonight."  
  
"Oh, really, don't worry. I'll be fine." Reynir flashed him another one of those strikingly genuine smiles as he took the water, his fingers brushing Onni's as he did so. Onni felt a slight warmth around his ears.  
  
Back in his own room, Herr Nilsson looked at him with her big amber eyes, making him feel accused of something. "I don't know what you're staring at. It's the warm weather." Of course, she couldn't understand Finnish any better than Reynir could, and Onni had no need to justify himself. The worry was concern for a friend, and the warmth in his cheeks at a touch was this damned weather, and surely that was that. "I don't see why you're looking at me like that." Herr Nilsson just started cleaning herself, giving Onni the distinctly ridiculous feeling that he'd been projecting the accusatory look she'd been giving him.  
  
Reynir's wheel was spinning, and Onni liked the hum as much as he ever had. He liked it more for it being Reynir's work going on in the background. As utterly useless as he could be sometimes, he was starting to suspect what was going on here. So there was something he'd need to repress when he spoke to Reynir. It just wasn't what he'd expected. 


	12. Part 4: Planting Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While we start this chapter still in April/huhtikuu/cleansing-month, we end it in May/toukokuu/planting-month. "Planting month" is probably self-explanatory regarding meaning.

Reynir was told that this month, April, was named for how they trimmed back the edges of the forest now. It was necessary, to keep the clear zone on the fringes of the tenuous safety they had here. In this winter, Reynir had almost forgotten how close the Silent World always was, this far from Iceland. When they reached April's mid-point, he saw the work begin. Emil had not forgotten his old occupation and led the team of people out, every immune person here who felt they could trust themselves with the heavy tools, plus a gaggle of the neighbours' braver sons in masks. When he scraped his ever-longer hair off his shoulders into a bun, put on his most flameproof jacket and shouldered his various implements of fire and destruction, Reynir remembered the conversation they'd had about the Norse gods. Were Emil to acknowledge them, Reynir was sure they would witness and love him.  
  
Perhaps they already did. The gods had always preferred to be honoured in action and character, rather than through devotion. Although it was good to consciously honour them, in the end, they saw you for who you were and did the choosing themselves. In the image of Emil covered with children, placing them down with care and then heading out to protect them with fire, you could see hints of Frey's patronage. Frey was working, too, in the slow stirrings of spring. For now, there was only the snowmelt, the slight gleam of ice turning to water on the very surface of the frozen lake. Soon, though, his sowing and steps would wake up every nettle and dandelion, giving them all their first taste of fresh greenery after months of ever-wrinklier carrots and potatoes. Onni said this was Pellervo's work. Their two different gods, separated by a world of distance and two very different languages, would usher in the spring all the same.  
  
The attempts to leave Onni alone were going terribly. Reynir had been doing so well, and then there had been that incident in the woodshed, and now he was dead sure Onni must have realised. If the early stages of this had been like a dog pacing and whining outside the kitchen, now he was a dog acting like keeping one paw outside that kitchen made their incursion stop counting. Reynir couldn't tell if Onni was genuinely as oblivious as he seemed, or if the blank reaction to his poorly-concealed flirting was a calculated effort to make him stop. Surely, he must know. Reynir felt like a lighthouse.  
  
In his less well-behaved moments, Reynir thought Onni might be responding in a way that meant - well, meant what he wanted it to mean. Despite knowing it was a bad move, he dropped hints, just happening to mention an ex-partner or two with a distinctly male name. When Reynir did his best attempt at an idle-seeming chat about Onni's personal life, all he got was an eyeroll and the assertion that of course Onni wasn't seeing anybody. Reynir didn't know what to make of him putting it that way. He knew he shouldn't be trying to make anything. Turning back on his statement that all he wanted was normalcy seemed like it couldn't possibly go well.  
  
It was a good thing most of his interaction with Onni wasn't when the others were around. Even the little Laura saw when they all worked together was enough for her to start quirking her eyebrows whenever Onni turned away and Reynir gazed at him a little too long. "Look, it's complicated", was all Reynir could come up with when her looks escalated into a sympathetic but intense exasperation. "There's history. It's a bad idea." She had eventually started to concur, saying she supposed she had known Onni a long time and he did only ever seem to get involved with women, "if you could even call it that". The implication that Reynir wouldn't have had a chance anyway should have helped him put it from his mind, and he was sure that Laura was just trying to make it easier to move on, but hearing someone voice Reynir's difficulty really only made it realer and worse. At least Laura dropped the topic instantly when he implied his issue was about the old mission. Reynir remembered that she had said, exactly once, that she wouldn't make him talk about it.  
  
She had meant what she said, and he appreciated it. While she wasn't nearly as terse in real life as she was in writing, there was still an element of that rigour in her thinking and acting. Reynir had worked out, far too late for his comfort, a solid guess as to why her Icelandic letter-writing style was so incredibly businesslike. His time among more scientific and scholarly Icelanders had exposed him to some ideas about the Finns, ones that had made him truly grateful he'd actually met some before pursuing that education. Maybe if he'd never known the Hotakainens, he'd have accepted the straight-faced assertion that Finns were a people of "low intelligence". The day he'd finally had his penny-drop moment about how hard Laura must have worked to secure Icelandic funding for her work out here, he'd felt awful. He didn't know how to apologise for having been that oblivious at first, and the seeming lack of hard feelings now made it seem like a weird thing to do.  
  
Still, being around Laura all the time and being reminded of that did make him start to think, daily, about how awkward it was of him to not be able to talk to so many people here. He really hadn't anticipated feeling as bad about this as he did. Jaana assured him over and over that she actually loved having a native Icelander around to practise with, and he'd never learn enough in just a summer anyway, and Emil had only managed because so many people here didn't already speak Swedish. As ever, though, Reynir's awkward feelings of fair play won. At first it had seemed like another good distraction, more work, some that would occupy the mind as well as the body. Onni started helping, though, and it was so good of him. Reynir couldn't object, and certainly couldn't tell him what he was making worse with his thoughtful efforts.  
  
Discovering their mutual love of birds was just another nail in the coffin. There were so many here that Reynir had never seen, and perhaps he would never know their Icelandic names, because Onni pointed out the _käpytikka_ and _kuukkeli_ with a shrug and apology for only knowing them in Finnish. Onni waved it off when Reynir asked, unconvincingly, if this was really the most useful vocabulary. "I think you're not learning enough to talk anyway, before you leave. I might as well show you this. Look - _tiaiset_." Onni's touch on Reynir's upper arm when he pointed out yet another little group of birds caught his attention far too well.  
  
Reynir had repeated that one back, sounding as dense as ever, probably. " _Tiaiset_ , that's this bird? But also like the neighbours?" He was sure he'd heard this word used to refer to those people collectively, but distinguishing Finnish words was still incredibly difficult for him. He still wasn't entirely sure he'd know the difference between _tapan_ and _tapaan_ if he heard them side by side, and he'd made Jaana tell him the difference between the meeting-phrase and murder-phrase about a dozen times now.  
  
"Yes, it's also family name sometimes. _Tiainen_ , is the single word. This one specifically is _kuusitiainen_."  
  
" _Kuusitiainen_. Oh, _kuusi!_ Like the tree! I think?"  
  
"Mm-hmm. Correct." Trees and birds not being Onni's strong point in Icelandic actually helped, here. At least it meant he heard the words often, when Onni opted to just employ them in the middle of an Icelandic sentence. The habit of just indicating a pine tree and coming out with something like "and then we're taking it from here, in _mänty_..." had only arisen after several weeks of talking, a part of the patter they'd worked out together. The Icelandic Onni spoke now was less stiff, grammatically stranger in some ways and peppered with vocabulary Reynir only recognised due to months in Finland, yet more expressive. It was far more endearing than it should have been.  
  
May Day came and went, and Reynir tried not to take too much hope from the way Onni smiled at him when the Finns celebrated it with as much drink as they had. When it was over, the whole forest seemed to take it as the signal to finally wake up. When spring came, it came all at once. The eerie call of swans echoed over the huge flatness of the lakelands, the birds themselves clearing the tall pinetops and landing among the few chunks of ice that still sat in the water, gliding to a stop as they returned for summer.  
  
Two days of proper hot sunshine had dandelions emerging from the ground literally overnight. Now that the built-up snow was truly gone, the tentative buds that had been forming on the birches furled outwards like a dancer's skirt, so fast Reynir felt like he could have seen it happening before his eyes if he'd had time to stand and watch them. The thin, sad coatings of grass revealed by the snowmelt changed colour totally over a matter of days, quickly tufting up into a thick coat of fresh, lusciously green feed for the hungry lambs. Reynir could almost hear their bleats as he started picturing their release upon the forests and fields.  
  
The wind blew over the lake, catching the nip of its still-freezing water and carrying it to Reynir's cheeks, even as the sun started imprinting new freckles on them. That same wind carried the sweet richness of the pines starting to release the scent of their tar, rustled the needles brightening up on every evergreen, and dried the clothes Onni and Sini were starting to hang outside. The length of the days suddenly seemed many times more luxurious than it had been, the bright sun glinting off water and fresh leaves, making the sky seem so wide and open it brought a jolt to Reynir's heart when he looked up at it.  
  
By the water, Reynir saw Lalli stripping off his clothes and handing them to a resigned-looking Emil, who watched as Lalli approached the pier with a serious stride made slightly ridiculous by his stark nakedness. Reynir had been warned that for non-immune people, the lake was a bad idea. Even without that, he wouldn't have even thought about jumping into it right now, remembering very well how recently it had been solid ice. Lalli seemed unfazed, though, despite the obvious shock to how he breathed after diving in headfirst. When he shook the wet off his hair, looking for all the world like any of the other things at home in the forest here, the spray of clear water caught that bright, wide sunlight and sparkled.   
  
As the two of them passed Reynir, Emil nodded at him and gave him a smile. Lalli turned when Reynir let out an awkward "Are you alright there?", despite knowing they didn't understand. Emil said something to him, then Lalli looked at Reynir and shrugged.  
  
_"Kylmä, vittu."_ He didn't sound upset, but Reynir had learned enough to be quite sure that was Lalli cursing at him. When he asked Onni about it later, relating the story and repeating Lalli's phrase, Onni looked greatly amused.  
  
"Yes, it's curse word, but I think that's not how Lalli's using it. He's using it more like, hmm, what's the word. Punctuation."  
  
"Ah."  
  
"He means it was very cold, I think. He always sheds his winter fur as early as he can, too early, probably." Onni returned to mending Janne's jacket, a small smile still tugging at his mouth.  
  
"Winter fur?" Reynir assumed this was yet another strangely translated idiom, not one he'd yet heard.  
  
"When you swim in lake for the first time after winter."  
  
"Ah!"  
  
Before Reynir abandoned the conversation, Onni drew him back for further discussion of Lalli's thoughts. "He wants to go to the forest with you soon, if you still intend to go."  
  
"Oh! Of course."  
  
"I'll come, for translation, I think."  
  
"Mmm. Good idea." This was great news. Now was Reynir's time to be really useful, and he couldn't wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Käpytikka" is a great spotted woodpecker, literally "pinecone woodpecker" in Finnish. "Kuukkeli" is a Siberian jay. "Tiainen" is a tit, of which there are many kinds in Finland. "Kuusitiainen" is a "coal tit" in English, but the Finnish is literally "spruce tit". Kuusi and mänty are spruce and pine, although Reynir's accurate memory of kuusi being a tree was partly luck because "kuusi" can also mean "six", or "your moon" (if you're using a more formal register of Finnish), which makes for confusing wordplay.
> 
> A note on the plurals, in the unlikely event anyone cares - so the "nen" ending is common enough in Finnish that it has its own rule for how you conjugate it, you make it into "se" so it can take any number of endings, because it needs to end in a vowel to be conjugated. I do not know why it becomes "se" instead of just losing the final "n", I think it just sounds better or benefits from being more obviously a conjugated form or something. The "-t" is a plural, so "tiainen" > "tiaise-" > "tiaiset". The fact that Reynir has heard "Tiaiset" as the neighbours' family name is because for Finnish families with -nen endings (so, most of them) you can indicate for example "the family Hotakainen" by just calling them "Hotakaiset".


	13. Chapter 13

Onni would not have said he was good with words in day-to-day conversation, quite the opposite, but poetry had been trained into him since birth. His first wailing breaths had been met, he was told, by the incantations of his watchful grandmother. She had started as she meant to go on, and his every breath since had been trained to the meter of magic. Even as he'd first learned to speak, he'd been taught to fit words into the forms of power and beauty, honing it by competing with family and others around him to find the most fit turns of phrase. Of course he'd learned to notice what would help him in those contests, finding new comparisons between everything in nature, teaching himself to draw everything he saw into metaphor and imagery.   
  
It made feeling like this in the springtime absolute hell. Once he'd cracked even a little and admitted he thought about Reynir that way, it was impossible not to see every bit of nature's bright newness in his open face. Onni always perked up a little in the spring, as much as he ever could be said to, reflecting the world around him in his moods just as surely as the lake took on the season's temperature. By contrast, Reynir's smile was the same as it had ever been, and now the rest of nature fit in with him. _Nothing in these woods blooms all year long, except you._ Now, that was the thought of someone beyond all hope.   
  
Of course, Reynir was just as kind as ever, and if Onni had been slightly more foolish he'd have taken it as a signal. This just wasn't the kind of thing that happened to him, though. These feelings struck Onni with such rarity, and he'd never acted on the ones he actually wanted to, with men or women. He knew what a disappointment he was, when the inevitable followed. There had been a few people, women who for some reason decided they wanted him to sleep with them, and every time he'd tried to oblige them it had just been bad. Those experiences had at least taught him one thing. Inflicting his weird, needy, poorly expressive self on someone he actually liked was totally out of the question.   
  
He'd missed something, probably, in that long stage of his late teens and early twenties where his whole life was based around being an impromptu single parent. By the time he'd gotten around to these things, everyone else his own age had worked out an awful lot he'd never had time to consider. Trying to just follow the script the more forward women gave him hadn't worked, and it was too late to go about not knowing what he wanted, so he'd stopped trying. It wasn't like a lack of relationships was going to kill him, nor was it really anyone's fault. Lalli couldn't exactly have grown up any faster than he had.   
  
Really, Onni was fine with how things had gone so far, and he'd found a family despite it all. It was impossible to know if he was even capable of being with another man, and the fact he was so unsure made him think the answer must be no. Surely, one should be able to picture these things, if one truly wanted them. He had no image of himself that fit here, and it was a moot point anyway, with Reynir so clearly out of his league. The birches' leaves glowed transparently when the summer sun shone behind them, breathtakingly beautiful after the dead winter, and demanding almost as much attention as the green of Reynir's eyes. Clover rose from the fields, its tips fading from pale to pink exactly as the lips in Reynir's face, and Onni couldn't help but wonder if the clover-tips would be the less sweet. It was all just terrible.   
  
At least Reynir didn't speak Finnish. The urge to tell him all this was much easier to quell, when Onni realised he'd have to do it in Icelandic. He worked hard to convince himself that the fact he had no subtlety of expression in Reynir's language was actually a good thing.   
  
There was so much to do, anyway. Buildings to maintain, sheep to tend to, still the later lambs. Reynir was as gentle with the last of them as he'd been with the first, visibly tender in a way Onni felt he couldn't have achieved if he'd tried, so Onni tried to pay less attention to that job. Lots of people could hold a sheep's head. It seeped into everything, but surely not every job was as bad. That damned still kept exploding every time they tried, and Reynir giggled at his swearing, and nothing gave him a moment of escape from how completely useless he'd become.   
  
Lalli reminded him of his promise to come translate when he and Reynir went into the woods to lay down defences. This was important, and it seemed unlikely to make anything worse, so Onni welcomed it. The talks with Lalli about his observations so far were sobering enough to kill any of Onni's wandering thoughts. Of course, a hot summer was coming, and there would be great danger when whatever lurked in the lake mud became active. It was impossible to fence everything off, when the water led into every other bit of water, and without the lake there was no life to be had. Lalli's outward appraisal was calmer than Onni's internal monologue by quite some way. Here, here, and here. It was what could be done. It would help.   
  
Reynir took Lalli's cue when they walked out, becoming businesslike and as focused as he ever managed to be. The woods were soothing, Onni feeling the same sense of returning home as he always did once under the cool shadow of the pines. Reynir noticed. "I remember you saying you belonged to the forest. I can see it." The slip of focus passed, and Onni let his mind return to the task as well, feeling the gentle glow of Mielikki's presence among the russet trunks. Soon they'd let the sheep graze here, and her power would protect them, as they did any herds in these woods. Until so recently, it had been an age since people had grazed herds in the forest without fear. Now, Laura's work allowed the gods to exert their natural power again, keeping the sheep from those dangers that actually belonged in the world. The way the abstract works of humanity had taken their place restoring the balance of nature and magic was deeply calming.   
  
Lalli stopped and pointed at a small groove in the forest floor, the habitual path of some creature. "Here."   
  
Onni turned to Reynir. "He said to put one there."  
  
"Oh, um, I guessed that one." Reynir circled the point Lalli had indicated like a dog clearing a place to sleep, eyeing it, then began to draw a few lines with his foot. After a moment, he sighed. "I feel like this needs something."  
  
"Oh?" Onni didn't like the look on his face. Lalli was watching the conversation with concern.   
  
"See, usually I don't really need it, but given how important it is for it to last... the gods really love blood, you know." Reynir prodded the circle with his foot again. "And this would work anyway, but if it's going to last all summer, a bit of blood might help. Sorry, I didn't really think to mention it until I was already thinking about how to make it stick - "   
  
"I'm sure Lalli can oblige." Lalli heard his name and looked at Onni for translation. "He wants blood. To draw them with, I mean."   
  
Lalli rolled his eyes. "Well he could have said so earlier." Holding up a finger for silence, he looked around, body tense with the act of intent listening. "Hmm. Wait here, don't go anywhere. I'll be back soon."   
  
Reynir and Onni were left in the woods together, the gentle calls of birds and the rustling of leaves obscuring Lalli's quick footfalls within the minute. Onni could feel him retreating, intent on the hunt. Whatever small and sufficiently sanguine creature Lalli found first was not going to have a good day.   
  
"It's so beautiful here." Reynir was the first to break the silence, looking around him. "I've never been really deep in healthy forest before."  
  
Onni had all kinds of words for the beauty of this forest, the dappling of light on the leaf litter, the exact falling sighs of the treetops as the wind moved them. He also had words for how closely that dappled light reminded him of the smattering of spots on Reynir's cheeks, and how the trees' creaking sighs compared to his own breath leaving his body at Reynir's casual touches. What he said, though, was "Look. _Talitiainen_."   
  
"Oh?" Reynir was listening closely. "What was the name again?"   
  
_"Talitiainen."_  
  
"Where?"  
  
Onni had to cross a little of the distance between them, placing his hand against the thin, straight trunk of the pine he'd seen the tiny black-headed bird in. Reynir came to meet him, his hand resting against the bark very near Onni's, his earnest gaze pointed upwards in search. At their approach, the bird flit to another perch, landing in an unusual nearby rowan with a token little _ki-kiu-ki-kiu_ and a shake of its tail.   
  
"See, now it's gone to this ah, _pihlaja_ , I don't know what it is in Icelandic." Onni thought Reynir had probably seen by now, but gestured and commented anyway.   
  
Reynir gave the tree's Icelandic name, and Onni turned to look at him. "So your name means something." Now was quite the time to realise how close they were.  
  
"Mm." Reynir started as their swiveling to face each other moved them closer together, and seemed to struggle with his words for a moment. "It's ah, sacred, in Iceland. I guess it's kind of a flattering name, it's meant to be very um, pure, and blessed, and - and protects, from all kinds of evil." He seemed to realise he was rambling, and his tone got very quiet as he capped off his accidentally enlightening stream of information about how similar the rowan's use was in their two nations. _Protection, purity, a ward against anything foul._ "I guess it's a nice tree to be named after. I always thought they were pretty."   
  
"They are, it suits you." Onni said it before thinking it through, and Reynir's face went nearly as red as his hair.  
  
"Um! Oh! Thank you." Reynir looked away and bit his lip, clearly mortified and yet not taking his hand from near Onni's, too polite to withdraw even after a comment like that. Onni felt like he should backtrack in all senses, after overstepping so plainly as to make Reynir blush. He couldn't bring himself to commit, though, to either stepping back from their moment of closeness or actually looking Reynir in the eye. Of course he was going almost as red as Reynir, signalling to anyone with eyes how compromised he was, and Reynir must know, now. The way he could hear Reynir draw his breath in must signal something.  
  
When Onni dared to raise his eyes from the floor, he found Reynir looking at him again, and his lean was closer rather than further away. Oh.   
  
"Onni?" Reynir's voice was so close to a whisper, the rustling leaves could have been the ones to make his words. Onni's brain didn't seem to engage in the process at all when he brushed Reynir's hair back from his face, leaning into the trunk of the tree, towards him, firmly into territory he knew was far beyond the safety he'd been maintaining. Reynir's lips parted again, forming a question as he returned the light touch on a cheek, "Onni, would you - "  
  
Of course, everything skid to a halt as Onni abruptly realised a presence had returned to this part of the forest. The footfalls approaching had been so light Onni hadn't even noticed them.  
  
"So, I think there's probably enough blood in these for eight or nine circles, if you _really_ spread it out."   
  
Onni removed his hand from Reynir's cheek, feeling his blush reach an even more deeply embarrassing shade. Of course this would happen. Lalli was looking at him with narrowed eyes and holding up several dead squirrels by their tails. Onni didn't even know how he'd found so many in that amount of time. "Squirrel blood is fine, right?" Lalli didn't comment at all on the scene he'd walked in on, merely holding his kills aloft with an expression of suspicious puzzlement.   
  
Onni took a deep breath, then a wide step away from the tree. "Reynir, is - is this kind of blood fine?"  
  
Reynir stayed leaning where he was, and his voice came out as a squeak. "Yeah. Totally fine. Wow, that's a lot of squirrels."  
  
Seeing Reynir's focus return to the important task at hand sent a ripple of guilt through Onni's embarrassment. Lalli was as efficient as ever, leading them from place to place with no time to pause and reflect, and this was just as it should be. This was potentially one of the most important things they'd do this spring, given how hot the later summer would be, and Reynir seemed to know just as well as Onni and Lalli did. The squirrel blood did indeed spread very far, with Onni translating Lalli's tips for getting more of it out of the little creatures' bodies. Reynir wrinkled his nose a little when he contemplated exactly how practiced Lalli was at extracting fluid from squirrels. "No, you don't need to translate my questions about that, it's fine. We have to be good at this kind of thing too, he's just so, um, _inventive_."   
  
Onni couldn't help but continue to think about what Reynir was named for. To think that all this time, Onni had been obsessed with how similar Reynir was to the flame-leaved birches in autumn, in the fall of his hair over slender limbs. The blood-red berries of the rowan were just as apt. And like a rowan growing near a house, his magic would help protect them all. Their gods might be so unlike in many ways, but the healing power of this sacred tree stood through the whole world. And back in the practical realm, Lalli was indicating a final spot, this time on the trunk of a tree. He twisted his last mangled squirrel in his hands and handed it over to Reynir. "Tell him the tail might make a good paintbrush, when he's working on the bark there." Onni sighed and translated that as briefly as possible.   
  
The fact the moment had been so thoroughly ruined was probably a good thing. Now Reynir was back to acting normally, Onni's reason returned and he remembered that Reynir had always been unusually friendly and touchy. It was entirely likely he'd misinterpreted what was going on, and even if he hadn't, there were so many reasons it was a bad idea. Lalli shot Onni another weird look as they all parted on their return from the woods. Onni wasn't about to try to start a discussion about whatever Lalli thought he'd seen. Reynir was immediately called off to help Laura all evening, shooting Onni a worried backwards glance as he went, and Onni took the chance to retreat to his room and firmly shut the door.  
  
Of course Reynir knocked on it later, a tentative noise that still made Onni sit up fast enough to startle Herr Nilsson into offense.   
  
"Onni? Are you in there?"  
  
Onni seriously considered answering in the negative. "Yes."   
  
"Hey, can I come in?"  
  
"No."   
  
Onni heard the sound of a step back, then a step forward again. He truly hoped that Reynir's seeming changes were not about to be proved a lie, not when Onni absolutely did not have it in him to explain why, about any of this. If he tried to come in now anyway -  
  
"Look, can we talk about earlier? I can sit out here." The tone of Reynir's voice was terrifyingly hopeful. If Reynir had seen what he was like earlier, and was responding with wanting something - Onni would never be able to tell him no, and the disappointment afterwards would be so intense he'd never live it down.   
  
"No." Onni could almost feel how stumped Reynir was, even through the door. Well, this was what Reynir got, for befriending someone this utterly useless. Still, even in the moment, his stance was already softening. "Please not now."  
  
"So do you mean later?"  
  
Onni sighed, loud enough for it to be audible through the door.  
  
"Um, well, see how you feel, I guess." The tone of Reynir's voice felt exactly like Onni imagined the sensation of a puppy's tender side against his boot-caps might, were he to ever actually kick one. Onni just picked up his pillow and shoved his face into it. He was thirty-two years old, a grown man possessed of easily enough self-awareness to know full well this was pathetic of him, and still not good enough at any of this to know how to make it stop.


	14. Chapter 14

Emil sat cross-legged next to Tuuri on the floor, cutting up her food for her and prodding it encouragingly until she shoved it into her mouth with grubby fists. Today was not a day she wanted to sit in chairs or use spoons, apparently, and Emil had decided it was easier to just let that happen. He always wondered how much of the Swedish patter he was feeding her with the dinner meant anything to her. Jaana insisted that Emil chatting at her all the time would make her pick it up, and when Viivi had demanded to be included in the "lessons", she did seem to start catching the meaning of his words much more naturally than Emil had ever absorbed a language. It couldn't do Tuuri any harm, at least, to hear _åh, lilla älskling!_ as often as she heard _voi, pikkunen!_  
  
The sound of Lalli entering the house, taking off his long boots and throwing them into the cupboard in the entranceway was followed by him bursting into the room, looking highly concerned. Emil expected to hear something about the trip he'd made to the woods that day, but instead what he got was "Emil. Are they fucking?"  
  
"Excuse me?" Tuuri took advantage of Emil's lapse in attention to throw chunks of potato at his face, and he wiped them off without really paying attention to it. The context of Lalli's questions was sometimes a bit of a struggle to work out, and Emil really didn't know who he could be asking about. "Jaana and Timo? Yeah, I think he's not coming over just for Icelandic lessons any more - "  
  
"No. I know about that, you've been able to smell them on each other for weeks. Onni and Reynir. Are they?"   
  
Emil had no idea where that question had come from. "What?"  
  
Lalli took a breath in and out. "If they were, you'd tell me, wouldn't you."  
  
"Why would I even know, if they were?"  
  
"You always know about this stuff before I do! Nobody tells me anything."  
  
Tuuri clearly had no idea what they were talking about, but hearing the conversation become more animated, chipped in with a cheerful "Mi!"   
  
"Yes, we're talking about Onni, clever!" Emil turned back to Lalli. "Um, can I ask why exactly you started thinking about this?"  
  
Lalli joined him cross-legged on the floor, delicately flinching away from Tuuri's greasy hands. "They both came to the woods with me and they were acting like people who are fucking do." His eyes narrowed and he looked thoughtful. "You know, when they start, and keep looking at each other like - like _this_." His impression of someone simpering towards an imaginary person at their side was quite exaggerated, and Emil was fairly sure he hadn't seen Reynir and Onni being like that.  
  
"Huh."   
  
"I think they are. _Why_ , though? Surely Onni's not that desperate." Lalli's thinking out loud was accompanied by an expression that said he was really trying to somehow solve this question logically. He seemed more confused by this apparent development than anything else.   
  
Emil had never considered whether or not Onni was "desperate". He hadn't actually put any thought into whether Onni had ever had a love life, or ever would in the future. Onni just didn't really project the vibe of being interested in that kind of thing. It wasn't as if Reynir would have been a terrible choice. Onni clearly didn't have enough taste in haircuts to mind Reynir's issues there, and he was a nice guy. The idea that Lalli might be right still seemed very odd. "I guess we'll find out eventually? It sounds best to leave it for now."  
  
"Hmm." Lalli looked disgruntled by the idea of leaving a question he'd already got his teeth into, but did seem to accept it. "I guess. I mostly wanted to know if the thing had happened again, where everyone knows except me."   
  
"Oh, absolutely not."   
  
"Okay." Lalli stood before Tuuri could complete her mission of climbing up him. "I have stuff to do. The runes were good I think, I feel better about the summer."   
  
Lalli left as abruptly as he'd arrived, the interlude closing off with bubble-like neatness as Emil went back to trying to get Tuuri to eat as much of her dinner as possible. The distraction meant she required coaxing back, but her generally voracious appetite won eventually. What if Lalli was right, though? Emil had meant it when he said he thought it was best to leave it, but -   
  
He found Onni the next day, with some difficulty. Onni had decided it was a good day to work on the roof of the barn, and Emil had to circle half the building to find the ladder he'd used to get up there. Once he'd finally scaled it, he pulled himself up over the guttering to lay with half his body on the roof. Up here above any shadow of trees or buildings, the sunshine was bright and intense, the roof warm under his palms. "Onni! Hey."   
  
Onni turned to face the noise. "Emil! Is there a problem?"   
  
"Oh! No! I just wanted to chat." Emil realised this was probably not a conversation they should have while yelling at each other across a roof, so hauled himself up further, crawling up to straddle the rooftop. Onni dragged himself over from where he'd been removing damaged bits of roofing and straddled the roof's peak as well, facing Emil and looking distinctly like he wasn't in a chatty mood. Well, Emil was up here already.   
  
"So." Oh dear, he hadn't exactly planned a smooth way to segue into the topic. "I just was sort of wondering." Onni was waiting for him to get to the point with increasingly little patience. "So, you and Reynir." Well, Onni's reaction to that was sort of an answer before he even spoke. Emil felt kind of bad for accidentally cornering him up here, given how quickly he looked around for an escape route and found none. Emil always forgot that Onni was capable of blushing quite that extravagantly. "Oh. Well then."   
  
Onni was quiet after that for so long that his embarrassment started to become quite contagious. Finally, he spoke, so quickly it was nearly incomprehensible. "I don't know what to do."   
  
"Ah." This was not making the situation exactly clearer. "About, um, what exactly?"  
  
"You know!" Onni waved his hands. "I don't know how you, how. How to, to do any of this. I think he wants, I don't know, I can't do these things!" As he finished his rambling sentence, his voice reached a peak and then abruptly shut off, as if he'd slightly shocked himself by speaking at all.   
  
"Oh." Emil thought he guessed what the problem was, now. Even though he'd never seen Onni show interest in anyone, he was still a little surprised, but well, these things happened. Not that it being probably normal made it any less awkward, attempting to be reassuring about it to Onni of all people, but he'd committed to this conversation now. "Look, Onni, I think he's a nice guy and he'll understand. Everyone's nervous the first time, you just need to tell him that you - "  
  
 _"Hey!"_ Onni's face went, if possible, even redder. "I've _had_ , you know, _relationships_ before - "   
  
"Oh, of course you have!" The case of contagious embarrassment was definitely worsening. "I knew that."   
  
Onni crossed his arms. "You sound like you don't believe me." He made an attempt to glare. "Plenty of relationships."   
  
"Well, what is the problem then?" Emil's attempt to change topics wasn't smooth, but at least it might be productive.   
  
Onni hugged himself tighter, staring at a spot behind Emil's head with great intensity, and was silent again for a long time. Emil considered just leaving before this conversation got even more awkward, but before he could make his move, Onni did sigh heavily and look like he was about to speak. Emil paused and waited, and eventually it actually happened. "Maybe there is something you can help with." Another pause, long enough for the possibilities running through Emil's head to start reaching into ridiculousness. "Emil. They were all women. I don't know if I can do it." Onni sounded like he was trying to get all the words out before he could stop himself again, the final sentence a staccato mess of forced syllables. "Tell me how you work out you can do that."   
  
Emil recalled being fourteen and it finally dawning on him that many people were genuinely attracted to women, in the same sort of way he was to men, aroused by their bodies and wanting to touch them and all. It had been kind of a revelation, realising that this was why so many men were in relationships with them, and it wasn't just that a lot of women were funny and smelled nice or whatever. He'd sort of logically known people were meant to go for different things, but actually internalising the truth of others being different to him had been a relief. People's behaviour made a lot more sense afterwards. That was the point that Emil counted as his big thoughtful moment on this topic. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing in there that he could draw from to meet the expectant look Onni was now giving him.   
  
"Mm." Emil tried to buy time by looking like he was searching for words. "Interesting question." He had not expected Onni to ever attempt to relate to him, in general, and especially not on this topic. What exactly Onni was even doing with Reynir was still a complete mystery, and Emil was realising that was probably as true for Onni as it was for him. As much as he felt for Onni's clear distress, he now somewhat regretted wading into this level of mess without anticipating it. "Do you not, you know, when you look at him don't you want - "  
  
"I don't know!" Onni had no body language left to close off further, and again started looking at the edges of the roof as if he'd like to escape off them.  
  
"Should I go?" Despite feeling bad for him, Emil kind of hoped the answer was yes. This didn't feel like it was going well.   
  
Onni just buried his face in his hands and made a noise of despair. "I'm thirty-two years old."   
  
"That's - yeah, you are, I guess - I mean - I'm pretty sure some people - " Emil didn't know where he was going with this. "What did Reynir say about it?" The fragments of expression Emil could see through Onni's fingers were again a clearer answer than his words would have been. "Onni, have you not talked to him about this at all?"  
  
The despairing noise got louder, still muffled by Onni's hands.   
  
"Um, if you want advice, I think that's the advice. Talk to him."   
  
"I will take the offer of you leaving."   
  
Oh, for fuck's sake. "Onni, seriously. It helps."   
  
Onni removed his hands from his face. "Well, it's always been easy for you!"  
  
"Er." Emil was pretty sure Onni knew that his time with Lalli had not been entirely a walk in the park. He'd been there for most of the hard parts. Surely, he remembered Russia, even if the old mission didn't count as part of the time. "I'm not sure me and Lalli have exactly had it easy."   
  
"You met him when you were nineteen and now you're raising sheep together." Okay, that was something like a point. "You know, you can go, I have work to do here."   
  
As much as Emil still wanted to help, he was pretty sure he'd filled his awkwardness quota for the next decade in the space of the last ten minutes, and he did not know how to argue with Onni about this kind of thing. Sliding down the roof, he called out behind him. "It'll help. I promise." Onni grunted to acknowledge that he'd heard Emil's opinion, the noise of him pulling roofing off again resuming with more force than it had before. Emil climbed back down the ladder, slightly in shock at the genre of conversation they'd just had, not at all sure if what he'd done there counted as helping.


	15. Chapter 15

Jaana felt like she and Emil had a nice symbiosis to their friendship. He spent more time with her toddler than most of the friends she lived with, did her haircuts for her, and once you prodded him past his awkwardness he could be an entertaining fellow stickybeaker. His habit of occasionally turning up in her room, flopping down on the floor and starting to ramble about whatever he "could _not_ believe" had happened that day was something she was happy to indulge. It was rare nowadays for him to bother using Swedish, but he did still switch into his mother tongue with her if he wanted to get really into one of these stories, his tone and gesturing taking on an extra expressiveness that was occasionally genuinely hilarious.  
  
Usually Emil's storytelling was far more dramatic than the actual thing he was describing, but this time had been different. His depictions of the blisteringly awkward conversation he'd had with Onni, Lalli's alleged observations prompting it, and the revelation of what Onni had been so moody about this time were definitely worth the "and _then_ , of all things!" manner he put on.  
  
"You've noticed how Reynir looks at him as well, right?" Emil hadn't. Well, their lack of a shared language did make their conversation and general interaction quite a lot more stilted, and he hadn't seen them around each other that much. "Gosh, I wonder what the appeal is. Is it the mullet or the _ralliislanti_?" Although they were speaking Swedish, she couldn't think of a phrase in that language that described Onni's heavily Finnicised Icelandic nearly as well as the Finnish term for it. Emil had laughed at her labeling of Onni's traits, but seemed to be trying to take Reynir's side.  
  
"Like, I wouldn't touch the mullet either, but he's a nice guy." Emil's hair pooled in a new shape on the floor when he tilted his head to see her reactions a little more clearly, arms flopping down around him as his hands finally stopped illustrating the story. "He acts like a grump but he's clearly putting it on."  
  
"Yeah, I know, I know. Still, the act is a lot." Jaana really didn't get what the appeal must be for Reynir, but perhaps her view of Onni was slightly unfairly coloured by having known him for slightly too long. She remembered too well the lengths she'd seen Tuuri go to, when she'd been in her mid-teens and desperately trying to set him up with someone. Her attempts to get him a girlfriend had clearly been a mix of genuine care for him and her own emotional self-defence. If Jaana had been in her friend's position, she'd have been desperate for Onni to find another person to offload his intensely moody neediness on, too. In some respects, he'd changed since his early twenties, so maybe she was being unfair in being puzzled by the constant puppy-dog looks Reynir had been giving him.  
  
The way Emil was telling it, though, Onni's behaviour now wasn't much different to how it had been a decade ago. Jaana remembered exactly how it had gone before, and was very sure Onni was still oblivious to how much effort they'd all put into directing women his way. It was difficult to find anyone assertive enough to get through Onni's almost wilful-seeming incompetence. Even when they managed to identify someone who saw past Onni's intense walling-off and neglect of his appearance, then built her up with plenty of "no, you're going to have to be more insistent than that", it just would not work out for him. Tuuri would soon be venting to her friends once more about the fact Onni had again managed to let it die, ending up more moody and needy afterwards than he'd been before.  
  
From the vantage point of her mid-twenties, Jaana did realise that perhaps their fifteen-year-old selves had been a little presumptuous in how they'd gone about things, but she didn't feel they'd been fundamentally wrong in trying to get Onni out there. Maybe a summer thing with Reynir would be good for him. Everyone here agreed Reynir was an extremely nice man, more than one of them had jokingly reprimanded Laura with "you didn't warn us he was going to be this cute!", and he seemed to be generally very sensible about sex as a topic. Jaana was sure she was not the only one of them to have thought about it, even if she might have been the only one to ask. After a minimally pink-faced "Oh, goodness! Well, that's very flattering, but I'm alright thanks!" Reynir had proceeded to treat her exactly as he had before, neither more nor less touchy and friendly.  
  
It was almost a shame how painless that had been, because the straightforwardness he'd treated the question with was exactly what made her think he would have been a good time. Really, Reynir's willingness to just deal with things had been an even bigger appeal than his outstanding prettiness, a fact that made Jaana feel like she must be getting old or something. His mooning over Onni was a bit much, and he clearly was less good at doing the asking than he was at responding to being asked. Still, he'd obviously seen enough variety in healthy human interaction to know that usually, this topic did not have to be made into a drawn-out issue.  
  
Knowing that made it just painful to watch, when she saw Onni grumping around the day after Emil's venting. He was managing to turn cleaning out the henhouse into a picture of angst. When Jaana leaned against the little house's wall and opened with "For goodness' sake, just talk to him", he looked like she'd told him to go rub his face on a troll.  
  
"Not you too." Onni started shoveling the chicken litter faster.  
  
"You know, he's not going to be offended if you ask."  
  
"That is not the problem."  
  
Onni didn't give her anything to actually indicate the alleged problem, so she plowed on with what she'd started saying. "Look, Onni, not to overshare, but I asked him and it was fine, so I don't think it'll be the end of the world - "  
  
"You did?" Onni looked mortified.  
  
"He said no. And was very polite about it. Because" - Jaana slowed down for emphasis, as this was the point Onni clearly needed to internalise - "he knows this is not a huge deal and _you can just say it_." That didn't do anything to fix Onni's look of mortification. "Look, do you want my opinion here?"  
  
"No." Onni started replacing the chickens' rough hay even more frantically.  
  
"I think it's pretty obvious what he wants, and you might as well go give it to him. He's only here for the summer, life is short, he's a sweetie! Go have fun for once." Jaana could see Onni was not really feeling the good intentions behind her advice, but it was true, and there was really no option with him here besides excessive bluntness.  
  
Onni's response was a defeated-sounding mutter. "I guess I do know what he wants." Only he could treat that as something worthy of doom-laden sighing. When he finished his task and immediately retreated, Jaana didn't try to follow him. There was only so much you could do for some people, and as much as she really did like him, Onni's emotional responses felt like dealing with a sixteen-year-old sometimes. Well, she'd tried her best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The term "ralliislanti" is derived from the modern-day Finnish term "rallienglanti". "Ralliislanti" is not a thing people would say now, but in the SSSS-verse with the lingua franca replaced I like to think the term survived through transmutation, the origins now obscured. "Rallienglanti" arose as a phrase when Finnish rally (or "ralli") drivers began to be interviewed in English for TV, bringing the standard of English of the Finnish backwoods into people's homes and hearts. If you want to hear how "rallienglanti" sounds, the man who runs the Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube is probably the most prominent modern example.


	16. Chapter 16

Reynir spent two days feeling very much like he'd messed things up terribly, torn between a strong feeling that it was only reasonable to discuss what was going on with them and the inner voice that reminded him over and over that he'd vowed to give Onni peace. Onni's avoidance had been awful, especially when their days had now gotten so tangled up in each other, just as a matter of routine. It was lucky that it was warm enough now to spend a lot of time out of the house, where he didn't have to disturb Onni's awkward brooding.  
  
He was so bad at hiding his feelings, in the same way a gangling, broad-leaved vine could be the most obvious in its wilting. Laura noticed, of course, and did guess that something had happened. "Mm, I think getting him to open up was always going to be a challenge. Good luck, I'm sorry. We can try to move you somewhere further away from him, if you want." Reynir thought that sounded like giving up, declined, and was gently informed that the offer still stood later if he needed it.  
  
Of all the possible resolutions, he hadn't expected one this abrupt. Returning to his sleeping place, he'd found Onni hanging awkwardly around, leaning againt his door and looking as if he was steeling himself to jump in freezing water. Reynir's attempt to nod and pass him was stalled by Onni letting out an almost-inaudible "Wait", and he turned to find Onni staring at his own scrapyarn-socked feet.  
  
"Onni?" Surely, this must be it, the "later discussion" he'd been hoping would actually happen. With the way Onni was acting, Reynir was certain by now that there was something worth a conversation. Onni drawing his gaze up and setting his jaw made Reynir doubly sure that was what was coming. Reynir had felt some real frustration over the last two days, but now he saw the closed, terrified stance this brought on in Onni, the frustration melted instantly into an empathetic ache that filled his chest. He was more than ready to take as long over this conversation as they needed.  
  
"Reynir. Do you want me?"  
  
Reynir hadn't expected him to get to the point that quickly. As much as he usually liked it when people were direct, it felt like he and Onni had an awful lot to get through first, compared to the situations Reynir had found himself in before. Still, he knew the answer to that. "Yes, I - "  
  
That hadn't really been a signal for Onni to kiss him, but Reynir kissed him back anyway, letting out only a small squeak of surprise before wrapping himself around him. Oh, and then being spun around and pressed against the door was exactly the kind of thing Reynir had pictured through months of watching Onni chop wood and fork hay. It overloaded the circuits of his brain so fast all his rehearsed conversation-openers escaped like smoke from an open window. _Wow, Onni._  
  
The kissing was kind of abrupt, but Onni's chest against his was firm and heaving and warm, his shoulders so gratifying to dig fingers into. And he smelled so good, plain soap and just enough of the day's sweat lingering on the skin of his neck, a clean manly smell that made Reynir want to smother himself in it. Perhaps it had been a while since he'd last done this, because Onni was taking a long time to relax, but he still seemed so single-minded in how he quickly started working his hands up Reynir's shirt.  
  
"Do you like having your neck kissed?" Reynir pulled back from the rather intense work Onni's tongue was doing in his mouth to ask him, still extremely surprised by the suddenness of this development, panting and running fingers through the long part of his hair.    
  
"It's fine." Onni kept working Reynir's shirt up, pressing him back and grinding into his thigh.  
  
"Uh." That wasn't an answer, but Reynir let Onni kiss him again. With the surprise fading into self-awareness of how much he was moaning into Onni's mouth, Reynir started to feel slightly uncomfortable about how little response Onni was giving in return. "Hey - would you like me to - "  
  
"Don't worry about me." Onni started kissing Reynir's neck instead, and he really wasn't bad at it at all, the lap of his tongue just below where Reynir's earlobe got close to his jaw making him gasp and want to melt into the feeling. Reynir could feel Onni was hard, too, but he couldn't help but think that he would be anyway, with the weirdly deliberate way he'd been grinding into Reynir's thigh. The hands up Reynir's shirt were so far from unwelcome, and Onni was perfectly gentle despite the firmness and directness, but the urge to let it continue was fading fast. It just wasn't good. For all that the motions were fine, Onni was going through them with the attitude of someone mending a fencepost in the rain. Reynir wanted Onni, and he wanted to want this, and his body wanted it beyond belief. Despite all that, he was starting to hate it.  
  
"Onni, I'm not sure about this."  
  
Onni stopped, tense as a wound-up crossbow. "Mm?"  
  
"I want it, I do, but _you_ don't feel like you're - "  
  
"Oh. It's fine." Onni's low murmer and firm hand on Reynir's lower back were so close to being reassuring, but surely the response was just a little too quick, too reflexive for Reynir to feel convinced it was genuine.  
  
"No, you - "  
  
"Don't worry." Onni's lips came back to Reynir's neck, leaving Reynir inhaling the sweet muskiness of his hair as the tingling of being kissed there spread through him, and it would have been so easy to let him keep doing this for just a little longer.  
  
"I _said_ no." Onni froze at his tone changing, then pulled away with a dawning look of horror. Reynir gulped. He didn't know how to start explaining what had gone wrong here, nor did he really know what Onni had been trying to accomplish in the first place. "Onni, what was that?" He'd said not to worry, but the idea that Onni had meant to go on as he'd started was impossible to not worry about. Onni didn't seem to take Reynir's question in the concerned way he had meant it, though, backing away and just starting to apologise. Reynir felt like his brain was mush, the heat of Onni's body still glowing on him and the places his fingertips had pressed still alive with sensation. There was no good way to express quite how upsetting he found this, a feeling of disconnection in Onni's attempt that he couldn't even clearly describe in the first place.  
  
"Listen." When Reynir asked him to do that, the trapped look Onni had only intensified. "What were you trying to do just now?"  
  
"I don't know." In the dim light, and with Onni pointing his face anywhere but towards Reynir's, it was impossible to tell whether Onni was tearing up. His voice sounded like it, though. Reynir was learning very quickly just how easily his heart broke for Onni when he was like this.  
  
"Onni, talk to me. Please." If all this was meant to be a substitute for talking, Reynir couldn't take it. Begging Onni for a conversation reminded Reynir of the last time he'd tried to get him to talk, which made him realise that he was standing right in the way of Onni's usual escape route into his room. Come to think of it, this was probably the worst place to try to work anything out. "Look. You need to come with me." Backing down again just didn't seem like an option anymore, so as much as Onni's hunted-animal look dug into him, he continued to insist.  
  
Onni remained silent and tense after he agreed to follow Reynir out of the house. Reynir went first, feeling the need to make sure they escaped without running into people who might demand a conversation, grateful that it was quite late now and most people were immersed in their evening tasks. Emerging into the slight breezy coolness of the early dusk helped clear Reynir's head a little, and he decided that taking Onni's hand to lead him somewhere was probably not a bad idea, now. The last half hour or so felt kind of unreal, enough that Reynir had to remind himself they'd now clearly moved past the point of "leave Onni in peace" being a plausible course of action, the grip he kept up grounding him in the reality of the fact.  
  
Onni let himself be led, just as he had let himself be pushed over the water and dragged into tea with the pastor all those years ago, just as he'd let Reynir come back over a barrier that had seemed totally non-negotiable. Reynir contemplating this as they walked together, through the dusk past the henhouse and the barn, started to paint a picture that again made him feel very profoundly upset on Onni's behald. Onni had started gripping his hand back hard enough that when Reynir tried to give him a chance to let go, the contact didn't break. A short way away, there was a light slope that Reynir had watched the lake from many times, and he led Onni towards it still mentally churning over what on earth he was going to say.  
  
It just hadn't felt like Onni was comfortable at all with what they'd been doing. Onni projected the image of having total control over his boundaries, but then, he projected an awful lot of things. Reynir didn't know what made Onni feel the need to do it like this. The guilt of being unsure if he'd somehow accidentally inflicted this on him was nauseatingly strong.  
  
"Here?" It was the first word Onni had said in a while, gesturing at the ground where Reynir had stopped.  
  
"Yeah, that works, I guess." Onni didn't face Reynir when he sat down beside him, leaving Reynir to stare at his hunched shoulders. "Onni. That felt weird." No response but further tensing. "Did you think that was what I wanted?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Why? Why would I want you to - to -" Reynir didn't know what he'd actually call Onni's horribly procedural attempt at whatever sex act he'd been aiming for. He realised his voice had been reaching a certain pitch, and tried to soften it. "Please, not like that."  
  
"Sorry to disappoint you." Onni sounded so bitter and defeated, Reynir's hand went to his shoulder before he even thought about it. The muscle there was so tense, and Onni tensed even more at the touch. Reynir had no idea how to get around whatever weird way Onni was framing this to himself. He was like a spring pressed so tightly it had become a watertight tube, not able to actually take in anything that contradicted the horrible spiral of convictions fueling his behaviour.  
  
His hand was still on Onni's shoulder, and he massaged a thumb into it, tentatively. "Would you let me?"  
  
"Let you - what?"  
  
"Fix this, here." Onni hissed at the feeling of Reynir's thumb pressing a knot in his back. "Oh, um, maybe not then, sorry." When Reynir pulled away, Onni spoke, a rapid tumble of words.  
  
"You can do that." His head flicked back around towards Reynir, and now that they were outside with the long rays of the evening sun illuminating them, Reynir could see more clearly than ever that Onni was terrified by this.  
  
Onni was trying not to hiss at every knot Reynir found. Reynir attempted to be gentle, but there was so much here that hurt when disturbed. He wondered how long it had been since anyone touched Onni gently, and no matter what the specific time frame was, decided the answer was clearly "too long". With his hands occupied, Reynir's thoughts flowed more freely, the current dredging up every little fact about Onni that had at some point hurt to hear. Of course this wouldn't be easy. Still, by the time he got to Onni's lower back, he had a few things to say that felt a little clearer.  
  
"You didn't let me finish my answer before. I do want you. But you need to tell me what you want, too."  
  
Onni sighed deeply. He'd relaxed into this as his physical body was deliberately unwound, so slowly he probably hadn't even noticed it happening, and his voice had a softness to it despite the sadness. "I'm not good at words."  
  
"Do you want me?" Reynir fell into echoing Onni's phrasing, in the way he'd taken to doing in their last few months around each other.  
  
"Of course I do." Onni had tensed a little again as he answered, and Reynir dug a knuckle into one of his shoulders. He'd already noticed the effect that had, and it almost worked as well this time as it had when the guards had been falling. Reynir could feel the space change around him as Onni again relaxed a little.  
  
"Can I ask you something more specific?"  
  
Onni took a wary breath. "Yes."  
  
"Do you like having your neck kissed?"  
  
Onni turned back a little and blinked, seeming surprised to hear that asked again. "I think so."  
  
"Well, let me know." Reynir leaned in and quickly, lightly planted a little sucking kiss where Onni's shirt-collar opened, just where his neck met his shoulders. The gasp Onni let out before he silenced himself was enough of an answer for Reynir to do it again, just a little higher. "Good?"  
  
"Mmm." It was bizarre to see Onni so flustered by that, after how assertive he'd tried to be not an hour before. Reynir wanted more than almost anything to see how much more he could do, Onni so close and feeling so tender under his hands. After earlier, though, it didn't feel good or right. Besides, as beautiful as the lakelands were, they were swarming with mosquitos every night now. They'd be eaten alive if they stayed out any longer. It was a decent excuse to quit while they were ahead.  
  
The return to the house was awkward, yes, but Reynir felt like they'd gotten past something important. In some sense, the air had been cleared. Reynir felt a jab of worry as Onni paused outside his door again, but no, all he asked for was a kiss goodnight. Again deeply awkward, but tender and sincere. Reynir didn't sleep easily, exactly, but instead of the past few days' sadness it was a strange buzzing mix of worry and hope that kept him awake. 


	17. Part 5: Summer Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Kesäkuu" (June) is actually the word that "kesä" or "summer" is derived from, rather than the other way around, but that etymology is mostly unknown now.

Emil really wished Lalli would just give into being useless for a few days whenever he got a bad cold, because the state he got into every time was almost hilariously tragic, in the same way a soaked cat could be. When Emil had got the same one the week before, he'd immediately flopped onto his bed and spent the next two days whining like a giant baby, refusing to move for anything that wasn't strictly necessary. There was no point doing anything else, because he knew full well that two days of totally indulgent uselessness was the fastest way to burn through it and get back to work. Lalli wouldn't hear it, though, trying to soldier through despite aching muscles and near-incapacitating revulsion at the amount of slime his face was making.  
  
Them both getting this was, in a vague and long-term sense, Lalli's fault. Usually, when he picked the "gross" bits out of his food and gave them to Emil, he would just relocate them onto his plate. Emil had reluctantly explained to Lalli that his initial habit, of just directly feeding them to him, was a bit much to expect other people to watch. Lalli still did it sometimes though, when not everyone was around, often enough for the kids to all see. Of course, they'd picked up on "put bits of your food in Emil's mouth" as the fun new game, not quite grasping the difference between a carefully untouched blueberry and a half-chewed carrot lump. Emil didn't know how they'd shrugged off this horrible cold, when it had wrecked every adult that had come into close contact with their mushy food-covered fingers.  
  
Finally, Emil won, after the fourth round of insisting that Lalli's work would be worse if he didn't take at least a little time. Lalli grumbled about it the whole time, and Emil did see why, with the summer proving just as hot as the mages had said. Any time without checks being made was worrying. Still, what he'd said was true. Lalli always pushed himself like this, and probably always would to some degree, but it really shouldn't be necessary now given how neatly he kept things in order when well.  
  
"Now you sit there, and drink this."  
  
Lalli glared at the tea Emil had placed on the kitchen table. "This is the stuff you pretend you don't use on your hair."  
  
"It's a drink too. Come on, you know what chamomile is." Lalli sniffled and curled up into himself even more, perching on the chair looking like an absolute picture of grumpiness. "I put honey in it." Lalli did perk up a little at the mention of something sweet. "It's still hot."  
  
"I know. I saw you boil the water." His voice was always so husky and quiet, a cold this bad made it nearly inaudible. Emil couldn't even hear what he was saying once he buried his face in his arms, but it wasn't happy. He left Lalli to it and went back to what he'd been doing, which was trying to salvage the things Tuuri had pulverised this morning.  
  
It could have been anything but these, Emil thought, but of course small children had a natural attraction to all the things it was worst to break. He knew it was his own fault for leaving the box stashed in the house, long after he and Lalli had moved into their own cabin, but it still felt unfair after he'd preserved this little collection so well for the entire time he'd been in Finland. He'd been told his aunt had tried to throw it out, when she'd been staying in his room a couple of years back, and it had almost gotten lost in the move out here as well. It was incredibly sentimental of him, and none of this little collection of labelled plants even still looked like the sprigs Lalli had brought him once, but he'd enjoyed keeping them all the same.  
  
Lalli was raising his head and peering at Emil through a curtain of hair. "What is that?"  
  
"Oh. Um. It's something you gave me." Emil held up the withered scrap of plant matter with "Sundew" on the label. "Years ago, now."  
  
Lalli peered at it with a look of real confusion for quite a while, then made a tiny phlegm-y noise of recognition. "You kept that?"  
  
"Well, yeah. I really liked them."  
  
Lalli's total lack of response to hearing it was fair enough, probably, given how miserable he was generally today. Grunting and letting his head sink back onto his forearms would have been his reaction to nearly anything. Besides, Emil knew full well Lalli wasn't sentimental in the same way he was. That hadn't stopped him being attentive enough to Emil last week to have his cold now. Emil had appreciated Lalli sitting there and responding to his whining about looking like a blotchy mess. The assurances that of course he was still the prettiest person in Joutenvesi were mostly tongue-in-cheek mocking of his vanity. Emil still knew what it meant, when Lalli took the time to sit there, pat his hair and tell him how useless he was.  
  
There really was no salvaging this. Tuuri had mashed, chewed and torn these old mementos beyond all reassembly. Emil finally committed to throwing them out, and in approaching the stove fire to dispose of them, disturbed one of the cats up to her usual antics. Herr Nilsson was in the pile of scraps that people used to start fires, chewing on something. "Oi! Are you eating paper again? Shoo, I'm sure that must be bad for you." Lalli raised his head at the burst of Swedish and watched Emil separate the cat from her vices with one eye open, then started to sip his tea with a grumbling sigh.  
  
His deep discomfort with having to neglect security in the summer was still palpable. Some aspects of the warm weather seemed to agree with Lalli so well, the side of him that loved to dive into lakes, and which rejoiced in going about shoeless and shirtless and free of any restrictive layers. Watching him run around all summer here, with his trousers tied off at the calf and his schedule his own, made Emil beyond glad they'd left Keuruu. There was always a certain background tension once the lake melted, though. As their normal lives went on, and the lake grew more beautifully blue and gleaming in the sun, its depths and those of the further-out forest were a constant threat.  
  
They had extra security this year, at least, and Emil didn't feel a great sense of foreboding. That extra security was still not easy to communicate with, but even Emil could tell that he was generally happy and relieved about something or other. Onni, too, with his wistful expressions and happy humming. Emil was starting to see what Lalli had meant with his over-the-top impression of what "people who are fucking" looked like. After how awkward it had been last time Emil had tried to talk to Onni about it, he was not going to ask what exactly was going on. He hoped Onni's increasingly tender way of acting around Reynir meant it was going well for him, though. 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This somehow ended up about 4200 words long. If you don't want to see boning, skip the middle 2000 words or so.

"It's not about whether I mind." That's what Reynir had said to him. Onni still felt bad for continuing to start things he wouldn't finish. It felt like he was being ridiculous, and he struggled to actually believe Reynir when he said it. Surely, when you were well into your thirties, it wasn't normal to be like this. Onni felt he was acting like a young teenager. Not that he had any real idea what those acted like, in this situation. When he'd been one himself it wasn't like he'd really had any time to spend aimlessly kissing people.  
  
Reynir clearly had. Onni had never really thought he had a particular standard when it came to these things, but whatever that had been, Reynir surpassed it. He was the best kisser Onni had ever known. Knowing that didn't help with Onni's lingering fear of having no idea what he was doing, but in the moments when he temporarily forgot about it, he kissed Reynir back in utter awe of how easy he was to melt into. It felt bizarre that at one point he'd been convinced that kissing another man must be harder, more abrupt, more spiky and aggressive. Reynir was the least spiky person in the world, and Onni never wanted to take his hands off him.  
  
Of course, Onni could feel how hard he was when they pressed together, hear the heaviness of lust in his voice and the way his breath caught at Onni rubbing on him through his clothes. It wasn't as if they were holding hands and thinking only innocent thoughts when they spent an evening like this. It was just that Reynir didn't feel at all like a threat, and let him take his time, and truly did not seem to care at what point Onni called off the proceedings. After a while, Onni started to believe Reynir when he said that truly, honestly, this part was usually his favourite anyway. "It all counts, you know." It was a bizarre feeling, realising what a weight that was off his shoulders.  
  
It was nice, too, that they kept doing everything else they'd gotten used to doing together. Reynir remained so disarmingly normal throughout all of it. Even when they were very half-naked and sweaty together, he didn't seem averse to breaking it off to mention some strange thing that had occurred to him. It was a habit Onni found a bit weird, but also oddly grounding. He was developing a long mental list of the nearly-nonsense statements Reynir had produced at terrible times. It felt sappy to admit to himself that he liked it, not just because it drew things out even more, but because it was impossible to try to remain as stoic as he usually did when Reynir's giggly interludes happened.  
  
"Do you ever think about how weird this is?" Reynir's "do you ever think about..." statements were always among the oddest.  
  
"Which part?"  
  
"Kissing. Think about it! You're basically just making a tube out of two people, and the hole at each end is your butt-"  
  
"Reynir." That was not what Onni wanted to think about when they were like this.  
  
"Sorry!" He kept an expression on his face that said he was trying very hard not to talk about it more. Onni had to make an effort as well, trying hard to keep from laughing as he started to think about how on earth Reynir's mind might have gone there. He had ended up starting to laugh after they'd already begun to kiss again, which had made Reynir laugh, and Onni laugh harder at the way things were dissolving.  
  
It had felt so normal and silly, a level of relaxed he’d known in that situation before, and he realised he was no longer seeing any of the touching with the grim resignation he used to. Trying to do something else - he wasn’t sure what, but something - started to seem like an idea he liked. Reynir gave him plenty of chances, and one day, Onni took that chance. Reynir had been kissing his back, not a place Onni had previously known was worth kissing, tonguing the surprisingly sensitive area where his spine curved at the base. Onni felt half-melted from all the parts of his body Reynir had so far sucked on. The two of them were already stripped to their underwear in Onni's bed, and had kicked out the cat so they could try to enjoy the free time they'd found. Reynir's hands massaging his buttocks were tender and firm, his little nibbling kisses inducing far too many shivers for the mundane bit of skin they were on. Onni hesitantly spoke up.  
  
"You can go lower than that."  
  
Reynir had frozen. "Lower?"  
  
Onni hooked his thumb into the waistband of his pants and started to pull them down. Reynir made a slight noise of surprise. "Oh, gosh. Okay." Onni wasn't really sure what assumption was causing that noise. It just seemed like a good moment to take his pants off, and he didn't know yet exactly what Reynir was going to do with the situation once it happened. He had not been expecting Reynir to literally put his tongue down there. The feeling of his cheeks being spread and a tongue being slipped between them made him turn and yelp. At the noise he made Reynir stopped, pulling his head up. "Onni? Was that bad?"  
  
"It wasn't bad." It really hadn't been. Onni just hadn't expected it.  
  
"You sounded surprised."  
  
"You don't have to stop." Reynir's tongue had never been anything but a good experience. Despite the shock, he had already started to wonder if this would be just as good as the rest.  
  
"Do you want-"  
  
"Yes." He said it before even realising he meant it. Reynir's hands again parted Onni's cheeks to let his tongue between them, and Onni immediately decided this was the best decision he’d made in a while. Onni had definitely not expected this to be a feeling that made him sink into his pillow and moan, nor did he expect to shiver and grip that pillow as Reynir's tongue did its best work on him yet. And Reynir was clearly having so much fun doing it. Every time Onni made a noise, he repeated whatever motion had caused it with so much enthusiasm Onni was left gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut to avoid letting the whole house know what they were doing. When Reynir grabbed his hips and moved him, pulling him back to get even more leverage with his tongue, Onni had to shove his face down hard and just try to breathe, his chest heaving.  
  
"Oh wow you - you really like that." Reynir pulled back so he could speak, sounding a little out of breath. Onni just made some noise that contained no words, but was very clearly positive. "Do you like fingers in there too, or...?"  
  
"I don't know." Onni was just breathing heavily, processing how good Reynir's tongue had felt. He hadn't known he liked anything there until ten minutes ago.  
  
"You don't?"  
  
"I haven't."  
  
"Wait, really? Not even once?" Despite his intense enthusiasm a minute ago, Reynir was instantly and totally derailed by this distraction. "How?" Onni didn't have an answer to that.  
  
"I just didn't." He turned over to face Reynir, sitting up. "Is it a problem?"  
  
"No! No. I'm sorry, I just, well, I can't imagine not being curious enough to - it's okay, we can just - "  
  
"Show me." Onni was sitting here with Reynir between his legs, naked and harder than he'd ever been in his life, still panting and reeling from the last new thing Reynir had showed him. If there was a time for more new things, this was it.  
  
Reynir looked just as surprised to hear it as Onni was to find himself saying it, but far from averse to the idea. "If you're sure."  
  
Onni kissed him. He tasted salty, and realising what the taste was made Onni's cock throb. It was bizarre being so turned on by that, but the cautious part of Onni's brain seemed to have had its blood supply redirected. He definitely wanted more of this. Reynir's hand had come to rest on his thigh. Onni pulled the hand higher, placing it between his legs, his certainty only settling as Reynir's hand came to his cock. "I'm sure."  
  
Reynir inhaled sharply as his hand wrapped around Onni's cock and squeezed lightly to feel how hard it was. The breathy tone when he answered made Onni think they were very much on the same page regarding sudden urges. "I need to get something, wait a second."  
  
Onni waited. He heard Reynir make his way quickly to his corner of the attic, rummage around for half a minute with increasing speed, then curse. Onni considered going to check on him when he heard the sound of Reynir's bag being upended totally on the floor, but then heard a small "aha!" and the sound of Reynir coming back. When Reynir returned, he was holding a bottle. "Okay, where were we?" He clambered back into his spot between Onni's legs, looking incredibly pleased to be there.  
  
The interruption had given Onni a moment to cool down, and he hesitated. "You were going to try to - to - " He demonstrated, grabbing Reynir's hand and moving it, hoping his inability to verbalise it came off as bad Icelandic rather than sudden prudishness.  
  
"Finger you?"  
  
"...Yes."  
  
Reynir took a deep breath. "Okay. Onni?"  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"You need to promise to tell me how this feels." When Onni just shifted uncomfortably, he set his jaw in the way Onni had only seen him do a few times before, but which he knew meant Reynir wasn't budging on the matter. "No, I mean it. You never say when something's wrong. There's no reason for this to hurt, okay? Not the first time or - or any other - you have to promise to tell me."  
  
"I'll try."  
  
"No! Promise."  
  
It was very hard to say no to Reynir when he got like this in a normal situation. Reynir in nothing but his pants, with his fingers already lightly pressed against Onni's wet, twitching hole, would have been even harder. "I promise."  
  
It was a promise he had to work hard to keep. Reynir went as slowly as it seemed possible for a human to go, and Onni still winced on the first try. He kept his word, though, and answered Reynir's constant stream of questions about how it felt, knuckle by knuckle, even though it felt needy beyond belief to require this much preparation. "Relax. Breathe. In and out." There was something about Reynir telling him when to breathe that made Onni's already rock-hard cock throb like nothing he’d known. When he lay back more softly and let Reynir move his legs around for him, they went in. First one heavily oiled finger, inspected with a "mm, we're good, I think", then a second to join it. Finally, Reynir's fingers crooked upwards as if he was beckoning, making Onni arch against the bed with a gasp.  
  
"Oh." Reynir's face split into a grin. His nervousness about the idea of all this seemed to have vanished, sometime around the moment Onni became speechless from the work of his fingers. "Oh, you like that too." He massaged whatever he'd found in there, biting his lip and looking beyond delighted as Onni writhed around. Onni did like it, even more than the tongue, more than any way anybody had ever touched him before. He showed it, too, needing to clap his hand over his mouth and still feeling like he was being far too loud. When Reynir kissed him to stop the moaning, still circling his fingers over that spot, he drank it in with desperation.  
  
Onni pushed Reynir up so he could speak, and his voice was a harsh whisper. "Fuck me."  
  
Reynir froze again, stopping the circling inside him. "Is that a um... an exclamation or a request?"  
  
Onni didn't know, so he pulled Reynir in again and let the exquisite massaging continue. In between kisses, Reynir kept talking. "Because if you want - if you want me to do that I - I should try to get three in - in there maybe, first, and - and if you're sure I - mm - should I -"  
  
Reynir's fingers dug in harder. Onni shuddered, and twitched, and what he wanted felt very clear.   
  
"It was a request." Onni let Reynir pull his face away and saw the bright green of his wide eyes, the lust in them still tinged with concern at how quickly Onni had made up his mind. Reynir took a very deep breath and nodded.  
  
"Okay." He started pumping his fingers in and out slowly, carefully. "Remember, you promised."  
  
It took longer to get that third finger in than Onni expected, long enough for the worry to creep in again. He had no idea what this would be like. He'd only been with a small handful of women before, and surely that would make this stop working, somehow. Maybe something would go terribly wrong and Reynir's cock would turn him off at the worst possible time, maybe he'd been wrong about this. The anxiety crackled in his chest and fizzled out as Reynir's fingers worked. They felt so good, good enough that Onni realised that if he touched his own cock too soon, this would be over before it began. He let it stay there twitching above his belly, feeling the stretch inside him and wondering how he'd ended up missing out on this for so long.  
  
Reynir finally took out his fingers and started easing his pants down. Onni tensed as he saw the thing that was about to go inside him. His heart jumped to see it, positively, probably, but the nervousness was still so thick it was hard to tell. Surely this feeling couldn’t be a lack of attraction, given how his pulse was racing, given how much he wanted to stare forever. Despite how nerve-wracking this was, the sight of Reynir fully naked and hard lit him up like the midsummer fires. Reynir was beautiful with clothes on in a normal situation, but from Onni's perspective now, lying on his back and oiled up ready to take him, he was ethereal. Onni sat up to see him better, kissing him hot and broad and wrapping a hand around his cock to feel it. Reynir let him fondle the shaft and know how swollen it was, moaning into his mouth as he did it.  
  
"You do this." Reynir handed him the bottle, and if Onni had been standing, the little noise Reynir made as he oiled up his cock for him would have made him weak at the knees.  
  
Onni didn't have to tell him to go slow. That was good, because it was hard to form words at all when Reynir finally slid into him. It all felt suddenly very real in a way it hadn't up till now. Reynir's face above him as he nudged his cock inwards was so intensely focused that Onni had to just hold onto it and watch it change. The fluttering eyelashes, the slight parting of lips as he made his way in deeper, the gasp as he pulled back a little before sinking in again. At first was more strange than good, but as Reynir moved in and out, Onni started to feel the sensation bubble through him and turn his breathing to moaning. He gripped Reynir's back, feeling like he might burst at the seams if he thought about what was going on too hard.  
  
Reynir moved Onni's hands down to his hips, holding them in place there until Onni grabbed them tightly enough. "Show me how fast." Onni didn't hold back. He pulled him in hard and deep, hissing as the feeling left him a little breathless. Reynir's eyes widened too, his breath catching. "Ah!" He drew back, let Onni pull him in again, lightly closing his eyes and biting his lip as they found their rhythm together. The slight resistance of hips under fingertips, the friction of them coming together again and again, filled Onni's senses and left him clinging on for dear life. When Reynir brought his hand down and started to massage the head of Onni's cock, the tiny world between them felt like it was falling into order.     
  
Reynir's lips were everywhere they could reach. Onni didn't have to do anything but dig his fingers into Reynir's thick hair, run his hands all over him, and try to kiss him back when his roaming lips got close enough. He had already been more worked up than he ever usually got, far more sweaty and runny and oily, when Reynir had started to dig into him. The way he was being filled up, fondled and stroked had him melting now. As much as he wished it could take hours, there was no way this could last for much longer. Reynir's free hand pressed on the back of Onni's thigh, pushing his leg back and out until Onni could hook his own arm around it. Onni could feel himself being opened up, spread wider, then feel the slight tap of balls against him as Reynir slid in again as far as he could. The feel of them made him clench and moan, so many kinds of relief mingling in the same response. Having a cock and balls smacking into him was a revelation in how good it was. He could do this, of course he could do this. Reynir was so hard, and Onni was so hard, and their bodies fit together like they'd been made to.  
  
Onni was so used it it being a non-event when he came. Usually he made sure it happened so his partners wouldn't feel bad, and it was alright, but not exactly the high point he assumed it was meant to be. This time, it was different, the feeling spreading from Onni's core and somehow catching every tingling ring left where Reynir had licked and sucked his body. Clenching around something inside him - around Reynir inside him - made him grit his teeth to hold back the noise, grab Reynir by the hips again, spread his legs and grind himself in closer to drag out the feeling. Reynir just rode out the arching and gasping of the man under him with a desperate keen of his own, clearly not done but stopping when Onni did, eyes wide and bright.  
  
"Onni." He closed his eyes lightly and kissed Onni gently on the lips. "Wow, Onni." His voice was breathy, ragged and heavy, his hands shivering slightly as he cupped Onni's face to take more wet kisses. He couldn't be far from it himself. "Give me a moment and I'll pull out - "  
  
"Aren't you going to finish?" Onni wasn't sure what the done thing was here, but he didn't feel like he needed to stop.  
  
"Do you want me to?" Reynir spoke his question almost in a whisper, and took his answer with a gasp when Onni pulled him in again, wrapping his legs around his thighs just a little tighter than before and taking him deep again with a shiver. Onni did see why Reynir had assumed he didn't want this. It felt stranger afterwards than it had before. The mess between them was slippery and the over-stimulation of freshly sensitive parts hard to handle. There was something about this he liked anway. The floating sensation Reynir had brought him to was stretched out by it, the dragged-out stickiness as he softened feeling like a very intense intimacy. It was close, and hot, and every fluid they'd produced was sticking to their bodies and scenting the hot attic air around them. Onni hadn't known how much he was craving this.  
  
Reynir was gentler now as he kept sliding in and out, keeping his touches to Onni's back and shoulders, his kisses now just peppering Onni's face. Onni had no idea how a farmer's hands had any business being that soft. When Reynir finally pressed his forehead against Onni's and whispered that it was soon, Onni braced himself. He had no idea what that part felt like, from this end. There was nothing to distract Onni from the feeling of it when Reynir came, his cock twitching hard, enough that they both shuddered in unison. So this felt hot, and pulsing wet, and gratifying in a way Onni couldn’t name to himself. Reynir's whole body relaxed as he pressed his lips against Onni's temple, placing one hand on the other side of Onni's head to deepen the kiss. The breaths in his ear were heavy, fast and so warm. Onni slid his fingers into the mass of Reynir's hair again and gripped his back tight, unable to think of words that would communicate how little he wanted him to move.  
  
"You okay?" Reynir had caught his breath enough to whisper.  
  
"Mm." Onni turned his head to kiss Reynir some more, still far from sick of it. "Yes."  
  
"You feel amazing."  
  
"Mm." Onni finally started to feel aware of the mess they'd been spreading over each other's bellies by continuing just now. There was cum everywhere, on him and in him and mingling with their combined sweat. Now that Reynir had stopped, it was changing from being hot to being slightly disgusting.  
  
"I gotta pull out now."  
  
"Ah." Onni felt oddly hollow when Reynir did that.  
  
Reynir propped himself up on his elbows a little and gave a very satisfied grin. He pecked Onni on the nose. "Good time?"  
  
"Mm-hmm." Onni was not feeling talkative, but he pulled his fingers out of Reynir's hair and began to stroke the wispy trails that escaped his braid. He pressed them down flat with no real aim to it, letting his breathing finally steady. Onni could hear Reynir's heart pounding through where their bodies met, his breath still heavy. When he curled against Onni's shoulder and sighed happily, Onni decided he could wait to clean himself up. The afterglow of this was too perfect to disturb.  
  
Reynir didn't stay there as long as Onni would have liked, though. "Just remembered I should probably go pee after that. Sorry. I'll be back."  
  
"Oh." Onni supposed it made sense as a thing you might have to do. When Reynir wiped himself off and left, pulling a pair of pants on as he went, Onni was left alone. It felt far too abrupt, and when he sat up he became very intensely aware of the sloppy mess that Reynir had left inside him. His heart felt like it was being gripped in a fist as the breeze from the open window caught where spit and cum and sweat had been left all over him, making him shiver. Wiping himself down barely helped. Now Onni felt very alone, and Reynir had left him so hollowed out, leaving enough space for fear to crawl in and start clawing at his insides with a vengeance.  
  
Maybe he wasn't coming back. Onni had trusted him so completely for a few minutes, but maybe Reynir was going to leave now and take that piece of his heart away to break it again. Him leaving was always going to happen eventually, why not precisely now? The euphoria had been so high, and now the post-joy crash was corroding all the confidence Onni had built up, and maybe it had meant nothing like what it had meant to Onni, and maybe -  
  
Reynir appeared in the door again, looking beyond pleased to see him still sitting there. "Hey." Onni was torn between the feeling of relief and tears-hot shame at how needy he was being, yet again. His face must have shown something, because Reynir paused as he clambered back onto the bed. "Onni? What's wrong?"  
  
"I can't explain." He should have just said it was nothing, but the hollowness was still so intense, taking away any ability to keep up his bluff.  
  
"Ah - oh, no. Look, this happens - come here, I'm sorry." Reynir pulled Onni against his chest, massaging his fingertips into the back of Onni's neck and the tops of his shoulders, humming into his hair. Being touched like that did help. Once again, Onni let it happen, wrapping one arm around Reynir's waist to secure him. Even as the panic started subsiding, he continued to feel distinctly pathetic. Even after weeks of waiting on it - months, if you counted a certain way - and far more care than he should need in the first place, he needed to be further cared for after the simple act of fucking someone.  
  
"I shouldn't need this. I'm a grown man." Onni mumbled this into Reynir's chest without making any attempt to move.  
  
"You're a sweetheart." Reynir said this so emphatically, kissed the top of his head with such warmth. It would be even worse to cry right now, so Onni just pulled Reynir closer, pressing his face into still-sweaty skin and blinking very tactically.  
  
Onni still wasn't used to sleeping next to someone else, even though this wasn’t the first time Reynir had stayed. The contact with another person's skin wasn't that pleasant on a summer night, but Reynir's heartbeat was so nice to listen to. Having someone hold him all night was a luxury Onni had honestly thought he'd never know again, before this had started. Reynir really wasn't going anywhere soon, only moving to check if Onni felt any better yet, if there was anything he could do. He accepted Onni's assurances that this was working, sleepier every time, his habit of early nights starting to show. Onni lay awake for much longer, still in a strange emotional space between happiness and panic. He hadn't been lying, though. The contact did help, and staying wrapped up in Reynir's lanky limbs was slowly replacing the emptiness with a feeling of overwhelming warmth. By the time Onni finally drifted off to sleep himself, he was pretty sure this had been worth it. He wished knowing these things didn’t have to keep being so hard. 


	19. Chapter 19

Starting this with Onni had been heartbreaking in some ways, because really, Reynir didn't know how someone could live in their own body for that long without knowing anything about what made it feel good. Everything about the way Onni had been, added up with all Reynir knew about him before, was forming a picture that he found hard to handle when he had come to care so much. Onni was always so surprised - so pleasantly surprised, and the surprises were very nice to give, but they weren't ones Reynir felt he should be giving. Having someone with a lot of sadness open up to you so often felt like that; friends or even strangers who were pleasantly shocked that someone took the time, their appreciation always leaving Reynir feeling mostly sad that someone else hadn't yet.  
  
Showing the sadness wouldn't help, though, not with the guilt and shame that was still lingering in Onni's actions and words. As bad as Reynir was at hiding it, there was plenty to distract him from the ache when he and Onni fooled around, more than enough to smother himself in and hide the little flame of worry still heating up his guts. Once Onni's need for affection was awakened, it felt bottomless, but Reynir would do his damn best to fill it anyway. Him finally starting to treat being touched as just what it was, rather than some test or sentence, it was such a relief. Reynir was sure he himself was as much of a beacon as ever. The happy wistfulness, the giddy joy of being increasingly sure that he was really helping, was painted on his face clear as a sigil on stone. When Laura noticed, she restrained her commentary to saying it was a nice surprise.  
  
The progress wasn't linear. Reynir tried to trust Onni when he said he wanted it. Before working out just how clingy some kinds of intimacy made him, Reynir still had several moments where he thought he'd made terrible mistakes. The fact that Onni seemed to have no idea his cuddliness was a good thing broke Reynir's heart a little again, but really, finding more ways to tell Onni he loved it was far from the worst problem to have. There was still a gap, almost every time, one Reynir struggled more and more to cope with as the care he felt continued to grow. Onni's baseline of mild sadness left him crashing after every time he let go and enjoyed himself, a back-and-forth that became predictable but still difficult to watch in action. He would seem close to tears in the morning, then hum while he worked in the afternoon. It was better to take those latter times as they came, rather than trying to nail them down.  
  
"Onni, are you ever going to set hives up?"  
  
Onni had looked a little confused for a second. "For honey, do you mean?"  
  
"Mm-hmm."  
  
"What made you say it?" Onni still struggled to follow the way Reynir connected topics sometimes, but now he'd realised this was a problem most people had, he barely reacted to it.  
  
"Your busy bee act! You hum all the time while you work, you know, like a bee..."  
  
"It's not bad idea. Not until we are finished fixing the still, I think. It would be too many things."  
  
By some miracle, they actually plugged enough of the holes for that to happen. Most of the rough fermentation they were working with was used up in their failed attempts, so not much was gleaned on their first try, and most of the people living here refused to drink it anyway. Emil's brave attempt at a sip resulted in a gagging splutter, and the _I told you so_ noises Lalli made through his lingering summer-flu slimes and aches were obvious enough for even Reynir to catch the meaning. Well, at least that had given Lalli some entertainment to distract from the continual glowering. It looked like it had been a properly vile one, and being out of action for so unusually long seemed to send him a little mad. Even if he still didn't really understand Lalli, Reynir sympathised with that feeling.  
  
Despite the mixed success with what had become their project, Onni kept singing _tehdään viinaa!_ under his breath to a tune Reynir didn't know, and informed him that it didn't really matter because those weren't quite the right words anyway. These moments of happy silliness seemed almost too good to be true, when things had been so hard, and still continued to be.  
  
Midsummer Day came around with every edge of the world glowing bright, and the glittering sun on the lake finally began to penetrate deeper into its depths. Those who could swim there told Reynir it no longer felt like ice. When Viivi finished "directing" Emil's arrangement of the bonfire and was allowed to light it, Reynir noticed Onni's mouth moving and his fingers dancing lightly on his crossed arms. He suspected the instantaneous spread of the blaze she was rewarded with wasn't entirely Emil's sneakily good work. Her whoops of joy and Emil's _"Hyvää työtä, Viivi!"_ carried across the fields as sparks began to fly up, and Onni responded to Reynir's look with an expression of blank innocence.  
  
Two days after Midsummer, Reynir awoke with his heart pounding, disturbing dreams swirling fresh and ominous in his mind. It was hard to tell what time it was, with the light never truly disappearing at this time of year, but it couldn't have been the hour to really wake up yet. The sun wasn't quite high enough for direct sunbeams to come through Onni's little window under the eaves, so it was perhaps two or three in the morning. Reynir settled his head back down, watching Onni breathe next to him, and wondered what this sense of foreboding was. Sleeping a little more did happen, but by the time it made sense to get out of bed, Reynir already felt exhausted.  
  
Sanna reacted with concern when he mentioned it at breakfast. "Did you see anything that you can, ah, say clearly?"  
  
"I don't think so." Reynir remembered flashes of fear and oily, mutated flesh, unsure if the fear would be his own when it happened. Visions of the future were often unclear, and for all he knew, it could be the deep-future fear of someone he'd not yet met. Or it could be himself, today. Perhaps a later vision would illuminate it.  
  
That illumination was never required, because it did turn out to be that very day. In the mid-afternoon, Reynir suddenly felt like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach, the woods seeming to hum with a sense of doom as he realised whatever he'd seen was soon. When the ringing feeling of a warding sigil being set off finally registered in his brain, Reynir realised what must be going on. Sanna, who had been working with him still beside the barn, lifted her head with a look of confusion. "Reynir, is it yours?"  
  
"Yes and this is _bad_ and we need to get to the woods _now_ \- " Reynir took off immediately, sprinting towards the source of the disturbance, and heard Sanna start to shout behind her. _"Saatana!_ _Lalli, missä sä oot? Laura, Emil! Autakaa!"_  
  
Reynir was not the best runner, not that fast despite his long legs, and his chest began to twinge before he made it past enough trees to see what was going on. He recognised the slime on a few trunks, the smell of troll instantly recognisable despite how long it had been. Through the silence left by the birds fleeing, he could hear the frantic screams of a young child, so far from still and silent that the danger must be in active pursuit now. The sound put enough wind back in Reynir to carry him forward and find the scene of one of the neighbours' younger sons stranded in the branches of a tree, one Reynir had warded. A huge beast circled it, howling at the ward that kept it from climbing, seal-like flippers jutting in a row on its back and vibrating as its voice boomed.  
  
Reynir opened his mouth to call out to the boy, faltering as he realised he couldn't remember which of the neighbours' seven sons this was. His inability to remember the difference between Tarvo, Tarmo and all the rest had seemed extremely funny to everyone before, but now all Reynir could think about was how desperately he didn't want this boy to die with the sole company of someone who couldn't get his name right.  
  
_"Tauno! Älä liiku!"_  
  
Lalli was here, still as half-dressed and shoeless as he'd been since summer started, but now armed and aiming for the heads of this thing. The first split open at his shot like a rotten fruit, the foulness inside splurting against the tree-trunk and sizzling into flame as it hit the sigil. Tauno screamed again from his perch in the tree as he saw the trunk start to smoulder. The beast turning towards what had attacked it made Reynir realise he had no ability to fight now, and he started stepping back rapidly, swallowing down the bile that burned his throat as the smell hit.  
  
He had backed into a tree. Turning his back on this thing to run was a paralysing battle of instincts. The mental fight seemed to stretch forever, but it only lasted until Lalli's second shot dispatched another head, making the beast pick up speed as it lumbered forward. Reynir could think clearly enough to be sure this freeze response would kill him, but not clearly enough to move his feet. Another gunshot, sending rotten blood splattering forward onto Reynir's bare arm, left the beast felled.  
  
The quiet returning to the forest stretched for six beats of Reynir's frantically pounding heart, and then Tauno started to cry. Others finally caught up with Lalli and Reynir, Laura running to the base of the tree and starting to coax the little boy down through the still-rising smoke. When Reynir finally put his head around the tree and towards where they were coming from, he saw Emil greet Lalli with near-hysteria. Onni followed him, caught sight of Reynir and immediately looked as if he'd been hit. He was hanging back. Oh, yes. Onni shouldn't be near that thing any more than Reynir should.  
  
Reynir walked towards him just enough to make conversation easier, wobbling a little as he did it from the adrenaline evaporating out of his body. Onni just kept staring, his face blanking out with horror, and Reynir realised that the staring was directed totally towards his bloody-looking arm.  
  
"Oh, gods, Onni - it's not my blood." He wiped it on some of the grass poking in tufts from a gap in the tree roots, smearing it but showing clearly the unbroken skin underneath. "Nothing went in." As woozy as Reynir felt, he was sure those were the facts. "It's fine. I'm fine."  
  
Reynir wished he could have hugged Onni when the revelation that he'd been mistaken hit. The shaking hands and the bright eyes would surely turn into sobbing later, and even knowing that putting his arms near Onni was the worst idea possible, not running to hold him felt like being kicked in the ribs. It wasn't worth the risk of touching him, even if Laura was totally sure Reynir's assessment was right.  
  
"Two weeks in Emil and Lalli's cabin, they can have your spot while we wait it out. I'm sure you're fine, but always following the procedure even when you're sure keeps the wishful-thinking accidents at bay. Stay away from Sini and Onni. Everyone else is fine to approach, but you have to stay out of the house. Is that all clear?"  
  
Even knowing her, Reynir was sure Laura wouldn't be this brisk with someone she doubted the survival of. Onni did agree with her when he came to talk later, standing a clear ten meters from the door and telling him that it was actually very good that the farmers around here were so paranoid. His voice was still so hoarse with badly-restrained tears that Reynir wanted to cry himself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Tehdään viinaa!" is a riff off "Juodaan viinaa", a song most Finns know. Of course it means "Let's drink liquor", and in Onni's version, "Let's make liquor". 
> 
> "hyvää työtä!" - "good work!" (I think by now you all know this one)
> 
> "Lalli, missä sä oot? Laura, Emil! Autakaa!" - "Lalli, where are you? Laura, Emil! All of you, help!"
> 
> "Tauno, älä liiku!" - "Tauno, don't move!"


	20. Chapter 20

This was not a good summer. First being so hideously unwell that he couldn't run around without it aching, then this time off almost certainly being what had lead to such a horrible incident in the woods, then having to move where he slept. Lalli hated it. When it was this warm, the space under the cupboard in their cabin was perfect for sleeping, in all the ways the attic was not. The rest of the house was so full of people, though, and finding a place under some furniture there would risk sticky child hands on him. Maybe tomorrow he'd find a place to sleep outside.  
  
Everyone talked about how the outcome of this could have been so much worse, and Lalli logically knew they were right. The likelihood of everyone surviving this was high, and they'd proved the wards worked. Some gratitude was merited. He told Sanna to tell Reynir that the runes had been good, then went back to internally seething about having to change how he did things for such an incredibly inconvenient amount of time. Two weeks was just so awkward, too long a time to brush off and too short a time to adjust to anything.  
  
Emil was acting weirdly, too. He knew full well that Lalli could handle this, so the level of panic he'd greeted him with afterwards had made no sense. People did insist on acting in contradiction to what they should know was true all the time, but by now Lalli had learned to expect the specific ways Emil did so, and this wasn't one of them.  
  
Reynir's mattress smelled off-puttingly like him, and Lalli could hear it when Onni cried for a while in the room near his and Emil's temporary sleeping place. Emil could hear it, too, and asked if they should maybe do something about it. Lalli didn't know what exactly Emil wanted to try. Approaching Onni when he was having a cry, especially one with these attempts at muffling, was an extremely bad idea. Emil seemed unconvinced by Lalli's assurance that there was nothing to be gained from trying to intervene, but gave in to the voice of experience, and eventually the crying stopped.  
  
"It just feels terrible to let him do that without at least knocking, you know?" This part of the attic had no real window, the only proper one being contained by Onni's knocked-together room, and Emil was just a silhouette when he lay next to Lalli in the dark and whispered to him.  
  
"You do not want to." As a child, Lalli had already learned a lot about shutting out the sound of distress, but had still made the mistake of following the noise of Onni's crying once or twice. The outcome wasn't as bad as responding to the cries of trolls would have been, but it was still bad enough for him not to need many lessons in it. Lalli could guess now that Onni had probably been upset by his wide-eyed staring, but at the time the loud "Don't look at me!" had been nothing but confusing and scary.  
  
Emil sighed heavily, and Lalli echoed the action without even really knowing why. This room was kind of stuffy, warm enough that they lay together stripped of most of their clothes and with the blankets piled on the side. Most things on this farm smelled at least slightly sheepy, but the attic stood out as extremely sheepy due to the piles of fleece stored here and regularly opened to use. Lalli had seen the impressive pile of yarn Reynir had produced since arriving. If he wasn't so annoyed about it not being their usual cabin, and the still-detectable smell of Reynir here, there might have been a certain cosiness to it.  
  
"Can I talk to you about something?" Emil spoke after a long silence, still whispering. It took Lalli a moment to remember that the quiet was probably out of consideration for Onni. "It's kind of a big topic. I don't know how to explain without just saying all of it."  
  
"That's fine. Tell me." Lalli whispered back. It just fit in this quiet, warm dark.  
  
"So, you know how I still write to Sigrun."  
  
"Yes. Is she hurt?"  
  
"No, she's fine, she's doing great, I just, she said something to me a while ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. She told me - I thought she was just trying to tease me when I read it - she said I won't ever meet her in Valhalla because I'm too boring now." Emil fell back into silence for a long moment. "But then I thought about it more and realised I never really considered that. Even after I started believing in magic. I grew up thinking that once I'm dead, well, that's it, nothing. I didn't think about it till then that - that's not true anymore, is it? I have to think about this now."  
  
Lalli could imagine this was a strange thing to realise only as an adult, but didn't know where Emil was going with this, so just let him continue.  
  
"And when I asked Reynir about it, he said people generally think that Sigrun is right, like, when I die, the same rules that apply to her apply to me. Helheim or Valhalla, that's how it works."  
  
"I don't know that magic. He's probably right."  
  
"That's what I was afraid you'd say."  
  
Lalli started to notice a slight upset creeping into Emil's whisper.  
  
"Lalli, you know I'd follow you anywhere, right?" Emil's tone had started fairly even, as though he was telling any other anecdote, but when he said this it sounded like he was about to cry.  
  
"Of course I do." Lalli still didn't know why Emil was so unhappy, but if that was for some reason a question, well, as far as he was concerned there was no question. Of course neither of them mentioned it much now, but the evidence of where Emil would follow him if he needed to was literally written on his face forever. Lalli reached out and touched the scar Emil had acquired in that underground hell, knowing he'd feel it despite how much it had softened and faded, and noticed that there was some wet on Emil's cheek.  
  
Emil moved his face away a little as Lalli found the tear. "I'm sorry, I just - Lalli, one day you're going to go somewhere I can't follow you, and I can't handle it."  
  
Lalli realising what the problem was made his stomach feel like he'd jumped out of a very, very tall tree. "I thought you knew."  
  
"Why would I have?" Emil moving his face and trying to blink away the tears was more audible than it was visible, and his whispering sounded choked. "I wish I still didn't know. I was fine with it before, the idea of living my life and then nothing, it was totally fine. But now I know I get time after, somewhere, still attached to all the people I was attached to." He was actually crying now, the flows of words and tears competing for space. "That's why I acted like that earlier when it got dangerous, because I've been thinking about it, and it's not just the idea of losing you. It's you going somewhere, and having to go somewhere else myself, still remembering you and missing you. Forever." His voice broke out of the whisper as he reached the final word.  
  
Lalli truly hadn't thought about this. He'd always understood how the afterlife worked, of course, but the fact he'd always known had meant it just sat in the back of his mind. Reaching this depth of involvement with Emil had been so gradual he'd never had a specific moment that had made him explicitly consider these questions. He didn't know what to do besides reach out and start wiping tears off Emil's face.  
  
"Do you ever get to disagree with which gods you were born to?" Emil sounded desperate.  
  
"Not to my knowledge." Lalli wished he had something to offer, but he didn't, and the fact made him desperately sad. "I don't actually know. I never thought about this." It felt terrible to admit it. "Sorry."  
  
"Not your fault." Emil took a shuddering breath in. "Oh, now I feel really stupid."  
  
"For what?"  
  
"Because you weren't thinking about this, and I've just said a lot of things as if I think you feel the same way I do about them, when I don't think we - we never said. I'm sorry." Emil's tone was becoming flatter, but the tears were flowing more thickly.  
  
"What things?" Lalli was again mystified by the conversation they were having. He kept wiping Emil's tears away, feeling very lost.  
  
"Well, you know. Here I am, assuming we'd even still be together when we died, and I don't know if that's what you're going to do."  
  
"That is what I intend to do." Lalli obviously had no idea what he was _going_ to do, because he couldn't predict perfectly what the future would inflict on him, but his intentions were perfectly solid. "I thought you knew that, too. I've known it for a long time."  
  
Emil made an overwhelmed noise and hugged Lalli, tight and enveloping. The crying got even wetter for a moment, then turned into ragged, heavy breathing. Eventually it became steady, heavy breathing into Lalli's shoulder, Lalli's arms wrapped tight around his back. Emil always had so many feelings about statements like that. It was still a bit surprising sometimes, feeling that important to someone.  
  
Lalli remembered how, after Emil and Onni had brought him back from Russia, he'd held Emil and been bowled over by how very made of fragile flesh and blood he was. Lalli's own mortality had never been hugely scary for him, knowing full well where he would go in death and how, but there were moments when the mortality of others was terrifying. There was nothing for becoming aware of that inherent human fragility quite like lying next to a loved one's bare flesh, feeling their pulse, and smelling exactly how their daily labour had scented them. Once again, there was a brief moment in which existing so physically in a dangerous world was overwhelming.  
  
Lalli hadn't failed to think about this out of not caring. It was just that the future really wasn't something Lalli was used to thinking about, not on the scale Emil was thinking about it now. For most of Lalli's life, his approach had been one of continuing to put one foot in front of the other, making no real plans on his own behalf, the thought of doing so barely even on his radar. Now that he could make life more his own, he had gone through the motions of planning for the long term, but his emotional state still had a way to go catching up with his decisions. The stretch of years felt terrifying when he thought about the fact he might actually live for as long as Emil had always expected to. He'd still meant what he said.  
  
Lalli started to wonder exactly how many years of remembering Emil would be worked into his dreaming in Tuonela.  
  
"I really can't explain all the different feelings I'm having right now." Emil whispered this against Lalli's neck, his breath warm and tickly.  
  
"Mm." Lalli squeezed Emil tighter, feeling very overwhelmed.  
  
"I don't want to think about this again until I have to." Emil's next pause seemed to compose him a little. "I hope you live to be a hundred, and that I do too, and we do so many nice things that I actually enjoy getting to sit and remember them forever."  
  
It was a scenario slightly too optimistic for Lalli to find truly comforting. Still, it was an idea he liked very much. The annoying smell of the bed they were in had been overpowered by the scent of Emil's hair all over Lalli's face, clean-smelling and subtly floral, like the edges of the hayfields.  
  
"Onni says I'm like our grandma. She was still so strong when she died, till it happened people thought she might live to ninety. It could be possible that I live a long time, maybe." Lalli knew he couldn't actually promise anything, given all the ways it was still possible for him to die young.  
  
"If that's right, it would be a lot of time. I could work with that." Emil planted a wet kiss on Lalli's forehead. This was followed by another on the bridge of his nose, then the tip, then Emil resting his forehead against Lalli's with a sigh. Emil's face was still very warm and wet from all the crying, and the kisses were restrained in their tenderness. When he went back to hugging Lalli, one hand laced into his hair and the other gently rubbing his back, they stayed holding each other like that for a very long time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With us finally about 2/3 of the way through, maybe I should tell you all what this fic is titled after! It's a song by yet another Finnish metal band, Stam1na. A translation of the first verse and chorus:
> 
> "Who knows where you are?  
> I can't see even a half of you  
> And what the hell is that supposed to be?  
> That constant recovery process  
> The whole life is just a process  
> The whole life is just a process  
> This life: poison green, pee yellow, matte black
> 
> So recover  
> Recover back to normal  
> Recover, a half is missing  
> Recover or you'll die alone."
> 
> It's very much about how you never stop struggling to recover, one of my favourite songs.


	21. Part 6: Hay Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heinäkuu (July) is Hay Month, another one that is rather self-explanatory if you think about what work would be done then.

Jaana knocked on the door of the Tiainen family house, holding a couple of books and a small pile of papers. When Maija answered, her hair free of its usual bun and down her back, she seemed a little surprised to see her. "Oh, Jaana! Did one of my boys leave something in your house?"  
  
"No. I'm here for Tauno's Icelandic lesson. Where are you keeping him?"   
  
"Oh, but they've all already bothered you once this week, and - "  
  
"He's going to fall behind if he skips two weeks. When he comes back, I want him to be up-to-date." Jaana didn't like to interrupt Maija too much, given how much of a struggle she had to get a word in edgeways among her rowdy pile of sons, but planned to be very insistent on making this effort if she had to.  
  
Maija caught her careful use of _when_ and clearly realised that Jaana wasn't just interested in keeping her students on the same page. Directing Jaana to a shed quite far from the house, she whispered before letting her cross the last bit of distance. "Let me know if he looks unwell, not just with the Rash, I worry about all kinds of things when none of us can get too close to him."   
  
Tauno mostly looked incredibly frustrated when Jaana got to him, although he was still nowhere near bored enough to find Icelandic article genders exciting. She hadn't found that hugely interesting at the age of eight either, so as ever she tried her best to be patient with his "but why do they need _three_? We don't have _any_ ". He'd shown a lot of improvement when he worked out that studying language would help him prod the neighbours' strange visitor for stories, but the effect seemed to be localised to when Reynir was actually around, and exposing those two to each other now would be totally against procedure. At least his behaviour being totally normal was a good sign. She was sure that he must be checking himself, and with a week gone by already, there being no obvious distress was a sign of hope. As foolish as counting unhatched chickens always was in this situation, Jaana did feel optimistic, given the way Laura had described the scene.   
  
When Jaana came back into the house, she found it unusually tidy. While many of Maija's sons had grown into useful adults now, there were still enough small ones to make general neatness usually impossible. Maija was making it still tidier, her anxiety palpable. The mysterious thumping noises being made by the boys in a nearby room went ignored for now.  
  
"I think he's doing well." Jaana felt a little bad for just standing and watching as Maija folded the dishcloths into an unnecessarily neat pile, but even if she were to put her books down and help, she still wasn't sure where they kept everything here.   
  
"Oh! His lesson went well?" Maija made her best attempt at looking bright. The earlier moment, in which she'd seemed ready to at least mention the reason they were quarantining her second-youngest son, had passed.   
  
Well, it hadn't, but this was apparently the level they were speaking at. "Yes, I think when he starts coming with his brothers again he'll be fine." It felt strange to leave so abruptly given she'd intended to make this a gesture, so Jaana wracked her brain for more things to say. "I've been thinking about taking up Russian again, you know. I'd be happy to lead study in that as well, if any of your sons are interested in yet more horrible grammar."   
  
"Oh, perhaps. They say it'll only get more important. Do you think it'll ever be as important as Icelandic, though?"  
  
"Who knows. Probably more for us than the rest of the world, given we're the only ones very close to them."   
  
"It's true. So hard to keep track of these things. We never heard enough from other countries when I was young for it to be worth learning anything, and now maybe all the children will have to learn two. Strange world!" With the dishcloths rearranged a third time, Maija moved on to scraping spots off the stovetop. Jaana got the impression that now was a good time to agree that the world was indeed stranger every year, then take her leave.   
  
Jaana was sure her gesture had basically been taken in the spirit it was intended. While she knew the neighbours were unlikely to think Laura had lied to them when she described the scene she'd found in the forest, it was natural to worry that something had been omitted. Perhaps this would go some way towards reassuring them that the people who'd found him really did believe in the likelihood of their child surviving his harsh lesson about wandering alone. Only one more week for them, at least, until they got the likely outcome confirmed.  
  
She wondered what it was like to bring so many children into this world, all vulnerable to its most constant and pressing threat, and deal with a worry like this every couple of years. Having Tuuri around had introduced her to so many new kinds of worry, even with the fact her father had been a clear outcome of the Dagrenning programme. As much as she really didn't like to think about her own child in such cold terms, it was a stroke of great convenience to have her be not only immune, but likely free of everything else the programme more subtly screened for. She still found the programme itself implacably unnerving at times, but seeing Maija like this did bring home how different it really was, to be non-immune in this world.   
  
It was odd to realise she identified with Maija's sense of fading relevance. Of course, Jaana did plan to learn Russian to a degree, maybe make herself useful helping with the travelers and traders who were increasingly appearing in Saimaa. The people who would be truly good at it, though, were now younger than her. The repetitive small-scale tragedies of the world and the contrast of its ever-expanding face played in her mind for the rest of the evening, a quiet reflection that would probably take years to truly resolve. 


	22. Chapter 22

It turned out that everyone had expected Onni to be upset, and had a clear idea in their head of why he might be reacting so badly. Their assumptions weren't entirely wrong. Of course he was terrified about Reynir, despite the seeming nonchalance with which he sat in that cabin and talked, when Onni came to stand outside from a safe distance. It wasn't just Reynir, though, and the fact everyone assumed it was only made it worse. He didn't know how Lalli wasn't losing his mind either, looking at how the neighbour family were behaving. Perhaps he'd been too young and oblivious to remember the precise tight mood of a family waiting on quarantine, but Onni had been easily old enough for the memory to stick like dirt in a cut, and all the littlest indications of it were the ones that made his skin crawl the most.  
  
"It's alright! Similar stuff has happened before, I was fine, I'm sure Laura knows what she's talking about!" Reynir leaning out of the window, waving another pair of socks he'd finished in his bored isolation, was in total contrast to the absolute breakdown Onni was having. It felt terrible to try to explain that the reason he was constantly close to tears wasn't just Reynir being in danger, because as paranoid as he was, he suspected Reynir was right. Onni gave up before he even started.  
  
He had tried to be appreciative when, several days after the incident, Emil had awkwardly approached again to ask if there was anything he could do. Laura had already brought Reynir his wheel to help him while away the time, so Onni had said no before ending the conversation as fast as he could. The obvious nervousness of Emil's approach hadn't helped Onni feel like less of a freak. It had been so long since a reaction like this, with the snapping and the urge to yell, and even though he did his best to restrain it pieces slipped through. The feeling of control fading only made memories seep in faster. Lalli blanked it out with horrifyingly well-practised ease, while most of the others grit their teeth and tersely reminded him that Reynir would almost certainly be fine. When Miri started to act incredibly off around him, jumpy and avoidant, Onni could have dissolved himself with shame.  
  
Sini was the first one to bring it up, finding him when he was away from the house and drawing herself up to her full height before speaking. Onni hadn't known what to say. He knew full well that she was right, and her sympathy coming from their mutual position as non-immunes only made it more blistering. Nobody needed him to storm and loom with all his height and weight, nobody liked it. As restrained as it was compared to what was going on inside, his vile mood poisoned the air and everyone suffered. Logically he understood that her reaction was more than reasonable, given what they all assumed, even given the truth.  
  
"You - you are a _grown man_." Her general quietness and shyness kept her stammering till the end, but the force of her conviction was still enough for her to poke him in the chest once before finishing her talk and taking her leave.  
  
That was exactly the problem, though. Knowing what he was, Onni hated it. A grown man, broad and powerful, just as terrified and small in his own mind as he'd been half a lifetime ago. Even at sixteen he'd known he'd end up taller than most of his relatives, but still the last growth spurt had been a betrayal, the filling out of his shoulders even more so. His voice growing till it could boom without effort, the power to command fire rising out of his spirit, the objective and unavoidable fact of being deeply intimidating when unleashed. He'd never asked for any of it, and now it put the final touch on how horrifying it was to still be this much of a mess.  
  
Maybe at another time, this feeling - of his skin sitting on him like a sheet put to the wrong bed, of every breath shaping his chest wrong, of all his features being in somehow the wrong quantity - would have been in the background of his reaction. It wasn't as if there were too few other horrors to remember, and he'd successfully ignored the fact his body even existed on its own for years, turning it to a pure agent of function in every way possible. It had become easy to forget this was even a deliberate act of repression, but then Reynir had found every part of him, and been convinced it was all worth slathering affection on. As different as Reynir was in many ways, the tentative exploration back had led to Onni finding qualities like his own, and finding he agreed.  
  
Onni had convinced himself, in the last month, that there'd been no reason for his fear of being with another man. He could easily put it down to what a creature of habit he was, knowing full well that he'd always avoided novelty wherever possible. Now this was happening, though, he understood too late why loving a body like his own had always been so terrifying. It had woken up an awareness of himself he'd never known, and now the memories rising out of his mind like so many trolls from the lake mud had something to manifest in. The closed book had been opened, the scorecard of horrors was visible to read, and the pages moved too fast by themselves for Onni to shut it again.  
  
Reynir's confinement ended, and he wanted to know why Onni was still upset. Feeling that concerned touch on his skin, the barrier between the inside swirl of memories and its horrible externalisation, made Onni want to scream. He still took his whole monstrous, lumbering self along when Reynir insisted they go for another one of his "talk about it" walks.  
  
Reynir was the one who should have spent the last two weeks terrified and upset. Onni had no right. Still, when Reynir stood with him in the woods and started to speak, Onni snapped like a twig under a boot.  
  
"Onni, they've checked me, there's nothing to worry about. It's all over." The way Reynir stood with him at the edge of the woods, leaned against a tree and pronounced these words was immeasurably painful.  
  
"No, it isn't!"  
  
Reynir's eyes widened. "It isn't..?"  
  
"It's never _over_!" Onni knew full well they were talking at cross-purposes, but as ever, knowing and acting on that knowledge were different things. Reynir's quietness in the face of his raised voice made him again want to crawl into the dirt and rot to pieces there.  
  
"Are we talking about the same thing?" In contrast to what had prompted it, Reynir's question probed with intense caution.  
  
Onni grappled with himself. The way he'd been opened up over the last month had only made everything he was coping with worse, dragging it to the surface and letting it harden to sharp points in the air. The urge to answer Reynir, though, to give in to the gentle exploring - Onni felt like a fish being hauled out of the lake when he answered "No, I guess we aren't". Reynir just gave him that look again, of that desperate need to be let in to help, and Onni continued. "I hate seeing what this did to his family. Tauno's, I mean, you remember the boy." Even if it hadn't happened to that family this time, the sight of their faces made Onni feel inescapably like it was happening to him again, and he didn't know how on earth to explain it properly.  
  
"I don't think I'll ever forget that one now." Reynir's attempt to lighten the mood with self-deprecation was too much, and another fragile stress-point caved.  
  
"Did you expect to deal with this, when you came out here for the summer?" The harshness of Onni's tone made Reynir start slightly, taken aback by how sudden the switch back had been. "Did you - did you know? Did you know this happens all the time here, that you have to - that when I see it, every year - and you say you _want_ me to know how I feel about things?" Onni's voice rose until he was all but shouting, Reynir's stance getting subtly ever stiffer as he listened to it. When Onni abruptly raised his hand to wave away his lack of suitable words, Reynir flinched, and the feelings of monstrous wrongness reached a saturation that snuffed out his momentum totally.  
  
He had forgotten how it had gone the last time he shouted at Reynir. It had been so long ago, but the look in his eyes now brought back the _I deserved that_ expression with horrifying clarity.  
  
"I wasn't going to punch you again." Onni could hear the way his voice went from borderline anger to pleading in an instant, almost as if he was hearing someone else talk, and wasn't sure if the fresh bloom of shame was at the yelling or at being this immediately pathetic.  
  
"I didn't think you would." The waver in Reynir's voice tore another shred off Onni's heart.  
  
Once again, Onni's limbs felt incredibly out of proportion as he brought his hands up to his face, and his grown man's voice was at odds with the half-formed boy whose feelings were making him blindly step back. When his back hit a tree and made him stop, he heard Reynir's footsteps following with the painful slowness of extreme caution, and wanted to scream again. Yelling just didn't feel like an option any more, though. There was only shame, and the compulsion to let all of this out somehow, and every bit of energy he reserved for repressing things already used up. For the first time in many years, Onni started to weep in front of someone as hard as he did into his pillow behind a closed door.  
  
His face got rapidly saltier, prickling with heat as his fingers soaked through with tears. Reynir still approaching made Onni want to disappear into the trunk he leaned against, and the hands tentatively placed around him surely couldn't really be Reynir's reaction to this.  
  
"Why do you trust me after that?" Onni gasped the words through sobs that threatened to make him start hiccuping any second. He couldn't imagine why Reynir, gentle beyond belief, would even want to touch him after the way things had been before.  
  
"That was different to now." Reynir's voice was low and urgent, his grip insistent. Onni couldn't even think about what had been _different_ then. If he thought about any more horrible things, the half-shredded heart trying to beat in his chest might just give up. Reynir's thumbs gently rubbing on his upper arms tore it up even more, and the slow attempts to get an arm around him made Onni wail like a child. "Onni? Is this okay?"  
  
Crashing his face forward into Reynir's shoulder and letting his fingers finally fall from in front of his eyes, Onni continued to sob brokenly, wet and messy. The shame of this was digging into him like a serrated hook, but he could no more extract himself than a fish caught on one. Reynir always smelled wooly and musky, from his work and clothes and piles of hair keeping his scent close. Onni had smelled it on his bed for two weeks now, missed the real thing terribly the whole time, and was now obscuring it with a horribly running nose.  
  
Reynir's height and firm shoulders made it easy to lean and cry there. Once again, the very things Onni found hard to handle in himself were transmuted, a comfort rather than a threat. Onni didn't know what it all meant, nor did he feel like he could understand why he was only being squeezed tighter as he moved into the disgusting, hiccupy stage of crying that soaked Reynir's shirt with tears and snot. Having someone hold him and stroke his hair while did this was so new. What he'd done to deserve it was yet another mystery.


	23. Chapter 23

"Do you think it was actually a good idea for Onni to build that still?"  
  
"Eh?" Lalli was already half asleep, but even accounting for the dozy gaps appearing in his consciousness, he was pretty sure that question had come from nowhere.  
  
Emil sat up in bed, brushing the messed-up hair off his face. "You know, with Onni still looking like he's about to cry all the time even though Reynir was fine, or actually crying when he thinks we're not looking, do you think maybe he's been... you know... _at it_ a bit much?"  
  
"Mh." Lalli did not know how Emil was even capable of worrying about this right now. They'd literally just finished enjoying the fact that they now had their cabin back and Emil was out of everyone's earshot. Surely if Lalli had been tired out by that, Emil must be exhausted, but then Emil's energy for talking to people always seemed to be weirdly easily generated.    
  
"He does have a pretty endless supply of hooch now, and the still starting to work well is about when the constant weepiness started, I'm just saying."  
  
"Onni likes being drunk. Usually he sings slightly more than he cries." Lalli let the weight of his eyelids win again, the doziness still very strong.  
  
"Yeah, but a lot of it makes you depressed. Does he not look depressed right now?"  
  
Lalli knew full well what a lot of alcohol did to people, and that Emil must already know he knew, because they'd talked about this when Emil had expressed surprise at how many Finnish songs were about self-pitying alcoholism. Lalli had asked Emil what exactly he expected people to write songs about, if not that, and Emil had listed several topics - nature, enjoying the nature, love - that Lalli had to admit Finns did sometimes also sing about. Of course, you would ideally combine one of those topics with the main one, but there was technically variation. Emil had admitted, too, that Swedish music wasn't totally devoid of self-pity and vodka. They'd decided that Sweden and Finland both had their own balance of songs about alcoholism versus songs about trees, and Finland just had an awful lot more of the first.  
  
It was all beside the point, anyway. Onni didn't have a drinking problem. His never acquiring one was some kind of miracle, for sure, but he had definitely managed it. Lalli had enough of a functioning nose to know these things. "Onni's fine. It's good to just let him get the crying over with."  
  
"I think you should ask him about it. Just to see if he's okay."  
  
"Why _me_? You're the one who does that kind of thing, I can't do it." Lalli cracked his eye open again, begrudgingly accepting that this might become a proper conversation.  
  
"What kind of thing?"  
  
"Making people happier."  
  
"Hey! I don't believe that." Emil lay down again and snuggled closer, laying his head on Lalli's shoulder. "You make _me_ happy."  
  
"Lots of weird things make you happy." Emil being so positive about Lalli's mood-lifting potential was touching, but not very convincing regarding what anyone else would think. Lalli knew by now that most people found him offputting, and was at peace with his nature. His life now, based entirely around things he knew he could do and people who accepted what those things were, was fine without adding this kind of thing to his skill list.  
  
"Are you not worried about him, just a bit?"  
  
"You changed the topic." Lalli had asked Emil not to do that with discussions he'd started himself, and it was annoyingly unlike him to forget.  
  
"I brought it back to the first topic."  
  
"Hmpf. You're right." Lalli took the correction and tried to remember where his thoughts had been. "It's worrying, but there's no point in _being_ worried. He won't like it if you try."  
  
"I don't think he was mad last time I tried, it was just really awkward."  
  
Lalli had to snort remembering how Emil had reported that conversation. The apparent reasoning behind Onni's issue with Reynir had made very little sense to him, but the utter mortification seemed very much like what he would have expected from an attempted talk. "See, it goes terribly. I could have told you, if you'd asked."  
  
"I bet it would mean a lot to him, coming from you." Emil was still being very snuggly. Despite it taking the form of a disagreement, this pestering was clearly still intended as a compliment, however misguided. Lalli really didn't know where Emil had gotten that particular idea from, and was now far too tired to try to work it out.  
  
"I'll think about it." Lalli was still pretty sure he wouldn't be approaching Onni about Emil's theory. The potential outcome of finding out Emil was somehow right, and then being made to act like people's self-medicating was something you bothered interfering with, was very off-putting. Even though this recent behaviour was a lot even for Onni, and that was probably worrying, Lalli definitely did not have that in him. Emil finally dropped it, and Lalli resumed his patchy drift into sleep. The seasons never truly affected his dreamspace, but the waters always took on the warmth of summer shallows when his limbs were wrapped up in another person.  
  
Lalli meant what he'd said. He did think about it, once he'd rested enough for the idea of interacting to not be necessarily exhausting. He was still thinking about it when he passed the woodshed and heard Onni chopping wood with more force than the task strictly merited. Dithering outside for a minute, Lalli considered the weight of past experience versus how bad it felt to see Onni even more of a mess than usual. As good as he was at blocking such unfixable distress out, it was getting to him, and Emil often had a better idea than Lalli did about what people wanted you to do. Onni was much easier to get along with than when they'd both been younger, too. Lots of things had changed and happened since the last time he'd tried this.  
  
Realising that he was going to try talking to Onni still didn't actually feel very good. Going through the door and getting Onni's attention felt like swallowing down some horrible food, just because you knew being dizzy with hunger later would be slightly worse. The pile of wood beside Onni was very large, so at least he'd clearly been letting out whatever feelings were behind this for a while.  
  
Now that he'd committed to this, Lalli didn't know where to begin. He supposed he might as well get to the point. "Onni. You're acting kind of like you've started drinking too much. Has that happened?"  
  
The slump to Onni's shoulders definitely wasn't a good reaction, but Onni didn't snap at him. Even when Lalli actually looked him in the face, it was hard to tell what the expression was meant to be. With the way Onni generally seemed to shrink into himself, it might be embarrassment, and whatever it was it was certainly extreme. The reply took a stressfully long time to come, and then didn't make any sense.  
  
"I've been really bad at dealing with everything, haven't I?"  
  
"Eh?" Was this an indirect yes?  
  
"I haven't been drinking too much, but I guess I know why you'd believe that." Onni turned his face away and picked up the axe again, splitting another piece of wood way off-centre.  
  
"Er." Lalli wasn't sure they were having the same conversation, and also felt somehow like Emil had meant he should act like this was all his idea, so was now completely lost. "Why do you think I would believe that?"  
  
"It's about the only thing I haven't done, isn't it? Storming around, giving you terrible advice your whole life" - another log bounced off the chopping block, split with nowhere near its usual accuracy - "knowing full well I'm terrible and still not getting any better, I might as well start drinking given all the rest - "  
  
"You give good advice sometimes." While Lalli did remember full well Onni's more overbearing times, he could at least break the increasingly bitter ramble by contradicting him on this. Onni stopping his chopping and ranting, then turning to look at Lalli, made him realise that he should probably give an example. That meant he had to think of a specific one. "You used to stop me eating yellow snow." Lalli realised that one had been a bad choice before Onni even settled on looking sad about it. "And you helped when I started seeing Emil, and felt angry. You know, when you said about waiting for anger to turn into something else. That was good. I did wait, and it helped."  
  
The amount of time Onni took to respond to that was again uncomfortable, and the crack in his voice when he did speak was even more so. "It's so much easier to know that kind of thing when it's someone else." Lalli still felt lost, but was pretty sure this was quite a moment for Onni. "I know how things should be, but I can't do it." The flat statement of something like that felt distinctly weird. Even and especially given the way they'd suffered through various things together, the explicit way they'd both named something close to them just now was very far from Lalli's comfort zone.  
  
"Oh." Lalli shifted where he stood. "Well, I hope you work that out."  
  
Onni's eyes got very bright, which made Lalli immediately feel like he should leave. This was possibly the weirdest behaviour yet in the long string of strange things this summer. If it was somehow Reynir's doing, Lalli couldn't even begin to know how he felt about that.  
  
"I don't know how to explain what's going on with me." Onni wasn't even trying to mask it in the wood-chopping now, and looked very much like he was about to cry. Lalli could think of exactly one time Onni had cried _at_ him, and didn't at all want to revisit how emotionally intense that had been.  
  
"You um, you don't have to, it's okay."  
  
Onni nodding and continuing to well up before a half-choked "Thanks" was probably the best reaction Lalli could have hoped for. Coming off as sensitive to the problem in any way was a victory, as was getting to escape with no arguing. Onni claiming as he left that this was a "good talk" wasn't a reaction Lalli totally agreed with, but it did seem to prove that Emil had been right about one of the things. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hyvää Juhannusta / happy midsummer! At summer solstice time, everyone in Finland wants to get hammered by a lake. This means I will be doing that, and updates will resume after the weekend, assuming I do not end up immortalised in the annual list of people lost to vodka-and-rowboats accidents. Toasting Ukko on Midsummer is apparently a legit old pagan tradition, so if anyone tries to get between you and your lakeside boozing, claim the right to religious expression and elbow them out of the way. 
> 
> Relatedly, a note on Emil and Lalli's conversation about Finnish drinking culture - those of you who are familiar at all with Swedish culture may be surprised by the idea of any Swede being concerned by excessive drinking. The thing is, even if Finland is not that much worse in actual fact, their level of preoccupation with their own unhealthy habits is absolutely beyond parody. It is considered remarkable even to other seasonally depressed Arctic circle people.


	24. Chapter 24

Reynir had known since he was small that he had grown up in "the most advanced and blessed nation of the world". While leaving Iceland had made him realise that some of that superiority was overhyped, the advantages of living there were still very obvious, and never more so than when he saw Onni like this. Reynir had never thought about what people out here did when they needed serious psychological help, but now he had to think about it, and the answer did not appear to involve any of the things they had in Reykjavik. He was starting to suspect that there wasn't really an answer at all.  
  
When Reynir had come home from his accidental participation in that hell mission, he'd been made to talk to an awful lot of people, and tell them all about what he'd seen. It had been pretty upsetting to do, and when he'd said so enough times, they'd compromised by sending him to talk to yet another person. Reynir remembered very clearly how quiet that room had been, and sitting in an ancient chair, large and squishy but made of some slightly sticky old-world material. The medic-mage he'd had to talk to, tall and black with an airy voice, possessed a quiet manner that projected transparency. When Reynir had told him that no, he'd never dealt with anything really terrible in his life before the mission, he had been surprised to hear him say "That's very useful".  
  
Hildur had told Reynir he'd gotten a good one. "The gods really do love you. When a mission I was on went wrong, that took me years."  
  
Most people's reaction when they'd learned that Reynir had gone into that situation totally unprepared had been slight shock, so being told that having "no history" was a good thing had been refreshing. The explanation that Reynir needed to make sure this experience became a story, something distinctly in the past, made sense to him. All the different ways he was told to ground himself in the present when he thought about horrible memories seemed honestly unnessecary, but the slip of rune-marked rowan wood he was given to put under his pillow did help him sleep without worrying, and it was nice to be trusted with "well, you're a mage yourself, fiddle with it till it works best". Reynir found that he managed to go back to living normally, dealing perfectly well with things that others who'd been abroad and experienced horrors often seemed to struggle to.  
  
Whether the medic-mage had been decisive in that would forever be a mystery, but what Reynir did know was that he'd been incredibly lucky to end up this well-adjusted. It made Onni's obvious suffering seem so dramatically unfair. The thing Onni had said to him when they'd come so close to fighting about this, that everything was _always happening_ , seemed exactly like what Reynir had been helped so much to avoid. He was finally starting to form a guess as to what made Onni's patchy, intense emotional state the way he'd always known it, but was still totally unable to help. He'd rarely felt his lack of expertise in something this keenly, and Onni's instability was painful on more levels than that.  
  
Onni got up in the morning, of course, all hands being needed for the haymaking work that was upon them all. He didn't ask Reynir to come into his bed again, though, despite occasionally cracking and clinging in a way that said he still desperately wanted contact. When the tiny new potatoes came out of the ground, everyone was overjoyed at how sweet they were just boiled with butter, except for Onni. Reynir knew by now that Onni loved potatoes, and all other sweet things, so this was surely telling. The way Onni mechanically ate his food, slept as much as possible, and blankly went to hack at his work was terrible to watch. Finding him crying was even worse, even if Onni now seemed to get something out of Reynir being around while he did it. No matter how many times Reynir did his quiet waiting, the positive effect was impermanent, if it even really existed at all. That was frustrating beyond words.    
  
This slow breakdown was just as puzzling to everyone else, but nobody had the time to work on putting all the pieces together. Now that the inevitable cold rain of midsummer day had passed, the days had become fine and hot again, the haymaking easy but still a huge and tiring task. Reynir rolled up even his shortest sleeves to try to get more airflow under his shirt, wrapped his braid around his head to stop it collecting sweat on his neck, and listened to Viivi yell _"Prinsessi!"_ at his red crown. She would insist on trying to count his freckles as they multiplied in the sun, demanding Emil come to look again every time she sat Reynir down to poke at his face, and the two men would shrug and smile at each other as they mutually humoured her.  
  
While Reynir was still as bad a student as ever, a few things had sunk in from interacting with these kids day in, day out. Tuuri learned to say _"Maitoa!"_ , and Reynir simultaneously learned that it meant to fill her screw-lidded little cup with milk. Viivi's _"Reynir, tule!"_ always came before being taken by the hand and pulled, and he learned she meant he should follow. One day, he heard Janne calling _"Viivi, missä olet?"_ and responded "She's in here!" without thinking, a small but unexpected victory. The first time Jaana walked in on Reynir having a conversation of sorts with Janne - tiny formulaic phrases, both listening to the other and then responding in their own native language - she reacted with an academic's pure delight at the strange communication they'd set up.  
  
Reynir told Onni probably a dozen times that he would listen to anything he had to say about this sadness. Despite being so helplessly non-expert here, he felt sure that as with most things, talking couldn't hurt. Maybe putting words to it would help with that sense of it being in the past, the one Reynir had been told was so important, and he told Onni this often. A few days before the hay-month drew to a close, Onni came to him with a request, his manner nervous and as laden with shame as it ever was when he expressed such a need.  
  
"Can you still walk across the dreamworld and find my space?"  
  
"Of course. Better than before."  
  
"Would you come tonight?"  
  
It had been a shock to hear, and odd to realise how significant that request seemed, a reaction that illustrated the huge gap between their first meeting and now. Reynir had once entered that space without even thinking about it, but years of schooling and life experience later, the invitation back felt almost obscenely personal. Truly, a lot had changed. Swallowing down his mix of emotions, Reynir had of course said he would come. Whatever this was, it was important.  
  
At first, Reynir thought he was going to let Onni down through being too worried to sleep, but he'd never been a true insomniac. He noticed he was dreaming when his pillow suddenly seemed hard, the rustling of the wind in trees around the house fading subtly into the rushing of water. The slight jerk of the rope fighting the undercurrent had Reynir sitting up, once again afloat in his little boat on the endless twilit sea. His fylgja was sitting at his feet, fluffy tail wagging with enthusiasm for its task. Reynir missed seeing dogs everywhere, especially the Icelandic sheepdogs his guide took the form of. Once Reynir focused, the dog focused too, and they made their wordless way across the water.  
  
Reynir's steps glanced across the water like a well-skipped rock, leaving ripples that he knew risked rousing some of the creatures lurking in the fathoms below. As clear as the water was, it was so far down that if he ever was to look between his feet, all he would make out was vague shadows against the pitch-black depths. He didn't look today, keeping his eye on the bobbing fluff of his fylgja's tail as it bound through the still water, breaking up the reflection of the strange constellations above. Running here never felt as tiring as it did in the real world, and he matched the dog's lope through the uncountable moments of their travel. Ocean turned to shore, and Reynir walked first through deep woods where flowers grew among patches of snow, then further along a shallowly sloping lakeside where the springtime smell of pine tar filled the air.  
  
He paused. These were woods he knew.  
  
"Onni?"  
  
A path appeared before him, seeming almost like one that had always been there unnoticed. Reynir took it, his fylgja now at his heels with ears pricked. When he emerged on the shore of a rocky island, he recognised it immediately, and walking around the side of a small cliff found Onni in the same space he'd always sat.  
  
"So you said you wanted me to come and see you?"  
  
Onni took a deep breath. "I did. I'm still not sure it was the most sensible idea."  
  
It took Reynir a moment to place what was throwing him off about Onni's reply, but of course, he'd gotten so used to the slight hesitation and thick accent to Onni's Icelandic. He sat down, closer to Onni than an acquaintance would but with a little space still between them. "I forgot how you sounded here. Without the accent, I mean."  
  
"Ah yes, without the "special" Icelandic." Onni's dark amusement was, in the face of Reynir's awkwardness around Finnish, now very embarrassing. Reynir blushed accordingly.  
  
"I did not realise you remembered that comment. I'm sorry."  
  
He initially took Onni's slow response as related to his awkward apology, but no, even here time was needed to think about how to phrase what he was about to say. "I asked you to come here so you would understand better. Do you sing laments, in Iceland? For the dead, and for one's own personal loss." The flatness of his phrasing made it sound like he'd mentally gone over how he might make himself do this many times.  
  
"Not as a rule. One might lament, personally."  
  
Onni just nodded. "We have a tradition here."  
  
The words faded into silence, long enough that Reynir felt it must be his job to break it again. "So you want me to listen to you sing one?"  
  
"I think singing one is what I can do, if you want something to listen to."  
  
An odd framing. "Do you want to sing it?"  
  
"I'm not sure. I think so." Onni was watching the water, his hands pressed between his knees in a gesture that looked much younger than the man himself was. "Would you come with me?" His voice still sounded like he expected to be pushed away.  
  
"Of course."  
  
Standing, Onni led Reynir through to a patch of woods on his island, the scents and sounds of the forest identical to those Reynir had come to know in the real-life Saimaa. Pausing in a small clearing, Onni sat among the knobbly protruding roots of a tall pine and gestured at Reynir to follow him. Cross-legged together on the floor, facing Reynir as he sat in he same way, Onni looked for a moment as if he was about to reach out.  
  
"I almost feel like I should be taking your hands for rune-singing, but that's not how this works." The comment was more offhand than Onni's usually were. Reynir wondered if he missed a lot of things like that, in not usually having access to the way Onni spoke in his mother tongue.  
  
His wondering was answered, in a way. When Onni began what he'd led Reynir here to see, it felt slightly wrong to find it as beautiful as it was.  
  
Onni's song began as an undulating keen, dipping into humming and arcing into a high wail, then fading into nothingness for long enough Reynir could hear the wind catch the trees three distinct times during the silence. When the words came, it felt like listening to the poetry of the skalds, language comprehensible but somehow strange to hear out loud. Reynir had memorised many kennings during his time among such skalds, and the way Onni put things here seemed much like those kennings, indirect and illustrative at the same time. Words in the dreamspace always scrambled if you tried to nail them down too hard, and these were even more like that than usual, the sense of them carrying in a way Reynir couldn't even begin to wrap his mind around.  
  
Onni's poetry, now the barrier was gone, was richer and more expressive than Reynir could ever hope to be. When the tears began to flow alongside the words, Reynir's heart cracked open as wetly and totally as an egg.  
  
"Oh, she who dearly cherished me, wracked by that birthless evil, this wretched one remembers", began Onni again, and Reynir heard him weep as he described that long-ago day when he had become an orphan and single parent all in one. The sense it made of Onni's horror in the past month was gut-wrenching. The tale of a family tense with fear, of the village's quarantines not saving them, of one bad call leaving a vermin-exposed father to transform so terribly and attack. A pre-dawn waking to this, a grandmother held in awe, the forces she called to fight it darker than the night they rose into. Fear after fleeing, unsure if he had been exposed too, horrified conviction that picking up his sister as they ran might have passed it on.  
  
Reynir had always loved his mother the best, with an easy warmth that was more than reciprocated, and seeing Onni bend as he cried out for his own mother's embrace was not how he'd wanted to find out they'd once had that in common.  
  
It almost felt better when Reynir's own tears finally broke past the restraint of not wanting to interrupt, the final topic of Onni's long lament touching him too closely to hold it back. How had Reynir never known that their family was so small now, to lose one was to lose half of all they had? Onni continued after Reynir took his hands, his eyes still closed and his face screwed red-tight into the very image of grief, but gripped them back as his voice grew hoarse describing the years since it had begun. Hearing Onni mourn for a life that fit ever worse around the scared, small core of his being was again horribly enlightening, and Reynir's tears were so thick he barely felt it when the hold on his fingers became painfully tight.  
  
The tears lasted longer than the words. Reynir didn't know if it would be appropriate to take hold of him, as desperately as he wanted to. He didn't know what he might even begin to say to Onni after all that. There was so much of it, each thing more than enough for Reynir's heart to break for him many times over. So much made sense now, and still there was nothing he could actually do besides listen to the gasping noise of Onni finding breath between the sobs. After a while, Reynir took the risk of shuffling closer and wrapping his arms around Onni's shoulders, resting a head there and rubbing Onni's back in wide circles. When Onni ran out of tears, Reynir didn't dare move.  
  
"I think we'll both wake up soon." Onni's throat sounded so dry.  
  
"That was so much." Reynir supposed it was about time he took his turn being the inarticulate one. Onni tensed when he heard it, of course unsure what to make of Reynir's statement. "I mean, you - you've had so many things happen - I can't really say anything that even touches - "  
  
Hugging Onni tighter would have to do.  
  
"Now you know what you're getting close to." There was so little capacity for expression left in Onni's voice, Reynir couldn't tell what that was meant to be, exactly. Not letting go seemed like the right thing to do, though.  
  
Onni was right. Reynir woke up first, fading out of the dreamworld to rise with the lark as ever. Onni didn't take much longer, answering the knock at his door looking absolutely wrecked. Hearing the word-garbling accent again when Onni said "Good morning" was like whiplash after the depth and flow of poetry Reynir had heard from him last night, and the sight of him bleary-eyed in his pants and socks made the realness of his flesh and blood and loss so viciously tangible.  
  
Reynir did have a response now, at least. "I still want to get close to you, you know." Onni's only response was a deep breath in and out, coupled with some telling blinking. Reynir kissed his cheek. "Please get a little more sleep." Thankfully, Onni complied, although the exhaustion that must have been behind him doing that was worrying. There was no way to describe to anyone what was making Reynir so very quiet throughout all his morning work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, lament singing is an interesting tradition, one that exists in some form in many cultures. While the area of this specific version's origin is now on the Russian side of the border that crosses Karelia, its modern revival is mostly happening in Finland. An older version of it was intended to help people cross into the afterlife, but now it's also used as a sort of confessional or storifying process that allows people to process trauma. I had some reservations about depicting Onni as making use of a tradition that was specifically Karelian, as I wouldn't want to be taken as implying that Finnish and Karelian traditions are totally synonymous, but there are a few things here - of course he is in the east, these cultural areas have bled into Finland organically in the past, and the mythology that Minna bases the entire SSSS-verse Finland on was mostly collected in these areas too. It's a living tradition that is establishing itself in the Finnish culture. Here, it gives Onni a cultural paradigm through which to convey the things he's being convinced it might be good to express. 
> 
> The things Reynir identifies as kennings are not quite kennings, but are sort of related. In lament singing, things are not named directly, but rather by poetic descriptors, for example calling one's mother "the sweetest one who brought me into the world". In Norse skaldic poetry, kennings are a semi-prescribed way of formulating slightly obscured descriptions, for example calling the sea "the whalepath".
> 
> The rune-singing Onni briefly alludes to is an old Finnish tradition where you hold hands, lean back a little so you're pulling on each other's hands, and sing together.


	25. Part 7: Harvest Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Elo" is an older word that sort of means "life", but also means a crop or a full grain. I think a decent translation for "Elokuu" (August) is sort of "harvest month/moon".
> 
> Standard "here be boning" warning!

"When are you done with everything today?" Lalli was hanging upside-down from a tree as he watched Emil dig potatoes from the edge of the field, the bare lower half of his legs hooking over a branch and his hair fluttering below his head, casting half-solid shadows on the grass. He was swatting idly at the mosquitos coming to investigate his naked torso, and the knife that always hung at his belt knocked against his waist as he swayed there.  
  
"Uhm." Emil shook another plant free of the disturbed earth and began to pull fat tubers from its roots. "Early, actually. It's Onni's turn to read to the kids, and I'm not cooking dinner either."  
  
"Good. I thought so." Bringing his hands up, Lalli hung off the branch as he brought his legs down, performing a neat little flip to land on his feet before spinning to face Emil. "I have something I want to do."  
  
"Oh? What is that?"  
  
"It's a surprise."  
  
"I didn't know you did surprises."  
  
"You like them." Lalli paused. "It seems that way."  
  
"Oh, yeah, I do like them! I just never - "  
  
"There's going to be one. Around half 19." With that, Lalli passed under the branch he'd been hanging from and departed into the forest, either to hunt again or perform one of the many other mysterious tasks he spent his days on. Emil was left slightly bemused, smiling to himself at how extremely Lalli it was to give him such a time-specific advance notice that "a surprise" was coming.  
  
This was probably enough potatoes. Emil had thought to fill the bucket with water before he even picked them, feeling very clever for remembering he'd have to wash them, then very stupid for not remembering that doing it in this order would involve carrying a heavier bucket there and back. At least the process of them all jumbling together as he hauled them back had thoroughly loosened the dirt off, and rinsing them off in another bucket didn't take too long.  
  
The process of washing potatoes did remind Emil that perhaps, this surprise was something he should clean himself up for. Lalli hadn't said the surprise would be anything sex-related, but well, it could be. Being prepared wouldn't hurt. Lalli's more inventive moments were always worth entertaining, and after Emil had found the time to sort himself out, he started seriously hoping this was indeed what the "surprise" was going to be. Lalli didn't even appear at dinner, and Miri said he'd come in earlier to shove some bread in his face before disappearing into the fields again. It formed an odd puzzle.  
  
Finally, Emil finished everything he had to do, and handed a slightly grumpy Viivi and Janne over to Onni. It was concerning how tired Onni still looked all the time, but he refused to give up anything he'd been made responsible for, and arguing was likely as useless as usual. Emil tried to forget about it for now as he made his way back towards his and Lalli's cabin.  He couldn't see Lalli inside through the windows, and he wouldn't usually sit anywhere but the bed unless he was sleeping under his cupboard. When Emil entered, he found Lalli sitting on the floor, cross-legged behind an absolutely huge pile of leaves, flowers and bits of bark. The expectant look on his face seemed like it was prompting some reaction, and Emil's moment of blank staring turned the expectation into brief confusion and worry.  
  
When Emil finally remembered the conversation they'd had weeks ago, where Lalli had seemed to not even register his upset about the old flowers going in the fire, he didn't know how to react. "Oh! Oh, Lalli, this is so sweet, I didn't expect you to - are _all_ of those a different thing? You didn't need to find me all new stuff, how long did this take you?"  
  
"Which question do you want answered first?" Lalli didn't seem to know what to make of Emil's overjoyed reaction.  
  
"I don't actually care what you answer first, this is so lovely!" Emil sat down opposite Lalli, mirroring his cross-legged position and picking up the first thing on the top of the pile.  
  
"That's aspen bark. I think you know that tree now, though." Lalli still looked concerned that this might not be educational enough.  
  
Emil picked up some of the flowers and leaves, arranging them around the little curl of bark in a tiny bouquet. "It must have taken you hours to find all these things." Standing up, he found a little string to tie it, then fastened it to the side of the stairs to their bed before returning to the pile to build another. Lalli, to Emil's surprise, joined in with the arrangement. He didn't seem to have anything like the same regard for aesthetics. "Why those together?"  
  
"The gods like it." Lalli tied his bunch and put the bundle on the side before getting right into building another. "These here, look - "  
  
Emil didn't know why people often put Lalli down as someone who didn't talk. Of course, Emil had once known little but silence from him, but that was before he'd learned to speak his language. Maybe, despite the errors he still made in Finnish, there was still some sense in which Emil spoke Lalli's specific language better than others. Lalli did seem to try to keep these monologues for people who knew what he meant by them. It was a little hard to follow, sometimes, the way he would dump information about something he had expertise in all at once. The intent seemed obvious though, a desire to share something he was excited about, helping others feel the joy of knowing it just as much as he did. Lalli knew something about every one of these plants, enough to occupy Emil's ears throughout the whole time they spent arranging them and placing them around the cabin.  
  
Lalli stretching up onto his tiptoes to affix a wild rose to the side of their bed was an image Emil tried to mentally snapshot as clearly as he could, loose summer trousers and lightly sunburned back and all. The love he had for this Lalli, the one that existed during high summer close to the wild woods, was one he'd never known existed before they moved out here. Without the compulsion towards any uniform or town mannerisms, he still acted with the almost inherent-seeming discipline he'd always had, but towards ends that felt far more innate to him. Emil still thought, often, of a time when he'd dreamed of helping Lalli "escape". In this moment, it felt like they'd won.  
  
"This is so cute." Emil finally interrupted when he looked around their living space and saw how extremely covered it was in tiny bits of the forest. Lalli was standing so close to him that Emil could take his hand, and he did, pulling him close and grinning like a shameless sap.  
  
"I think they won't last as long like this." Lalli sucked at the inside of his cheek for a moment. "They lasted much longer in that box you had. But it's okay, I know now."  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"You didn't tell me how much you liked them before. I would have been bringing them more often, if I'd known."  
  
Emil felt such an urge to kiss Lalli hearing that, but told himself he should probably save it until they were done talking. "For future reference, this is good, but I mostly liked the part where you brought me flowers."  
  
"Okay. Got it." Lalli continued examining their handiwork, looking pretty satisfied with his effort. "Every spring, then."  
  
Although the warm glow of realising Lalli had actually made a romantic gesture had faded a little in the flurry of activity, the last two statements together had more than brought it back. "You want to do this again?"  
  
Lalli's reply was characteristically droll. "Well, they grow every year."  
  
"I suppose they do."  
  
"So as long as the seasons keep changing, I'll do this for you." The slight softening of Lalli's face as he continued was still nothing like the sentimentality Emil leaked from every pore, but it hit his heartstrings better than gushing declarations from someone else ever would. The more he thought about it, the more sweet and apt it felt. Lalli was still gripping the hand Emil had pulled him in by, leaning close to him with the casual familiarity it still felt like a gift to get from him. Emil felt slightly bad now for sometimes thinking of Lalli as someone who barely tolerated his sentimentality, when he'd clearly been paying more attention than he was often given credit for.  
  
"I genuinely thought that when you said there was going to be a surprise, it was some kind of sex thing." Emil realised once he said it that he'd just proved he never really grew out of his knack for ruining moments.  
  
Lalli, thankfully, was also ready to prove he'd never minded Emil's clumsiness. His moment of thoughtfulness and shrug left him looking pretty sure in his conclusion. "It could still be."  
  
The interest clearly growing in Lalli's face as Emil let go of his hand, laced fingers into his hair and closed the small distance between them was very encouraging. "Well, I _did_ spend all day thinking about it already."  
  
Lalli still seemed like he wasn't sure exactly where he wanted to take this at first, responding to Emil's tender flowers-gratitude kissing by giving back only as much as he was being given, but seemed to make his mind up shortly after he first heard Emil sigh at the contact. Digging the fingertips of one hand into Emil's lower back, he started the kisses that meant business, the kind he knew would make Emil hand himself over in an instant. Lalli leaning around Emil and speaking instructions right into his ear sent him straight from eagerness to the point of desperation. Being gripped by the waist and precisely directed in how to first strip himself, then get on their bed, was exactly the kind of thing that Emil was weakest for. Lalli followed, and made no effort to disguise his glee at Emil already being hard for him.  
  
The first time Emil had suggested Lalli tying him up, there had been a veneer of practicality to it, or so Emil liked to tell himself. Lalli just liked to be in control of where all of their limbs were at all times, and pinning Emil's hands back took up a hand he could have been using to do other things, and it had just been a tool to make him more comfortable with all this. Of course Emil had suggested this good and sensible thing, once the idea came into his head, just as a matter of being considerate. Emil's arms didn't roam when he was on his hands and knees, though, so when Lalli had first got him like he had him now - face down, wrists bound together behind his back and his butt in the air - he had needed to admit this really wasn't just for Lalli's sake. "I know" was all Lalli had said, judging Emil for his minor oddities as little as ever. He was so good.  
  
Lalli pulling his hips up and back, leaving him positioned like that, made Emil a little short of breath. All his weight on his shoulders and face, no resistance to the pressure of any pushing. Emil knew fingers would slide in easily, when he was bent like this with his legs so open, and heavy breathing with his face crushed down would leave him dizzy. He let a muffled moan escape into their mattress before Lalli even started, the anticipation making fingers along his spine torturously good and the sound of the lube bottle's cap coming off making his breath hitch. First the wet feeling, then two fingers. Emil relaxed into it, biting his lip and whining. The pushes were so low-effort, the position Emil was holding doing most of the work for Lalli as his whole body felt the motion. "Ah!"  
  
"Shh." Sharp fingernails in his hipbone wouldn't make Emil any quieter, and Lalli knew it, which gave the shushing noises a slight air of mockery. "So loud." Lalli's fingers curling, playing with Emil's prostate like a toy, left him keening and shivering helplessly. The teasing about how loud he was being was really quite unfair, given how expertly Lalli prodded at everything that would cause more noise. Emil could feel his cock dangling above the mattress, desperately aching to be touched. The movement from his hips rocking gave something so close to real stimulation it was driving him mad. He still couldn't help but love it, straining against the rope as his body shuddered, and Lalli moved his free hand from Emil's hips to his hair. Emil gasped when Lalli gripped it, tight against his scalp and pulling slightly.  
  
"You should get ready for more." Lalli's fingers still circling and curling made it hard to remember to listen. "All of it, if you can handle it."  
  
Emil forced himself to take a deep breath in and out.  
  
"Do you want me to try?" Lalli taking two fingers out, then starting to lightly push with three, was a very compelling feeling.  
  
"Yes."  
  
It was hard to relax enough, bent up with his shoulders and neck starting to ache, but they'd managed this before. Three was easy, four starting to feel like a stretch, especially when the upper part of Lalli's palm followed the light texture of his knuckles. It still didn't take that much time for Emil to be comfortable with it, although by now the constant stimulation with no relief left his thighs shivering and his core muscles aching. Lalli's hand had barely left its spot in Emil's hair except to further lubricate his other hand, his touches alternating between painful little tugs and gentle fondling. The little wet noises of such a well-lubed hand sliding back and forth were both reassuring and full of exciting promise.  
  
The final part, where the thumb joined the little cone the fingers were making, was always the hardest. As carefully as Lalli worked his way in, Emil felt himself stuck stretched out at the widest point, a feeling that left him gritting his teeth and moaning low in his throat. He could feel himself sweating as the feeling settled in, his back tingling when a bead of it slid down his spine and between his shoulder blades. The shallowness of Emil's breathing and the way his forehead was dampening the mattress were clearly making Lalli very happy. Even over his own noisy responses, Emil could hear the occasional little murmur of satisfaction whenever Lalli managed to get a little closer to easing his knuckles in.  
  
"Shh. Relax more."  
  
Emil complied as best he could, breathing as evenly as was possible while stretched out and folded up like this, and managed to steady himself for a moment. Lalli's free hand lost its tight grip on Emil's hair, his fingers stretching out into little scalp-massaging motions that made Emil sigh at the sweet reprieve. There was a brief spot of quiet, Lalli crooning away while his fingers rubbed at Emil's head and neck, the pressure of his hand gentle but insistent. When Emil finally let himself relax enough, he was rewarded by the feeling of knuckles slowly slipping past the tight ring containing them, the final little push as smooth as ever. Emil bit his lip and ground his face back into the mattress as he felt fingers gently curl into a fist inside him. "Fuck." Muffled as it was, Lalli clearly heard him, the indicative little noises sounding more satisfied than ever.  
  
"Mm." The hand Lalli had in Emil's hair tightened its grip again. "Good?"  
  
"Ah - mmmh." Emil shivered and shifted a little, the liquid heat that seemed to have replaced his guts turning into a mess of tingling. "I, just - please - _please_ touch me."  
  
"But you can finish like this." Lalli didn't just say it, he pulled Emil back by his hair so he'd hear it better, and all of this together made Emil groan.  
  
"Lalli!"  
  
"It'll be good, I want to hear it." Something - the ridge of Lalli's thumb, maybe? - was jutting out right where it needed to, and when Lalli made the slightest of circling motions, the intense pressure made Emil tense up and wail again. "And if I get tired before you manage to, I guess you could wait till I do this again - "  
  
Emil was beyond noticing what language his next round of cursing was in. Whatever he was saying, it was more pleading than anything else. The movements of Lalli's hand were tiny, but spread out so wide and deep, Emil felt like he was being stuffed. Now, this was an image he liked, being shoved head down and worked into until he gave Lalli the performance he wanted. The idea of Lalli actually doing this right up until it no longer entertained him, making Emil wait on his orgasm until he did it exactly how he was told, being filled up like this on Lalli's whims - Emil had to remind himself to breathe, arms jerking against their restraints and legs still shivering.  
  
It was almost enough, the feeling of it and Lalli's words, but Lalli taking his hand out of Emil's hair and running it through the sweat coating him pushed it just that bit further. Lalli was growling a little whenever Emil gasped particularly loudly, blatantly delighting in the state he was in, and when he carefully started repositioning himself the last shreds of Emil's brainpower were spent on wondering what was coming. Lalli's tongue meeting the swell of one butt cheek, tasting the sheen on it like the glaze on a roll, then his teeth coming down on the tender flesh there made tears spring into Emil's eyes. Lalli's teeth were sharp and he bit hard. The minor relief of the pressure coming off for a second only made Emil wail more when the bite came down again, now into flesh tenderised and doubly sensitive. Emil's moaning finally turned into a sob, and Lalli withdrew from the mark he was leaving, free hand coming back to Emil's hair and stroking with a soothing hum.  
  
The throb and sting of the bruise coming up felt like it had a direct connection to Emil's twitching cock. Lalli must be able to feel the clenching on his wrist as Emil got closer. His starting to pump in and out in tiny increments was the final breaking point. Emil could feel the deep heat spreading, the tightness solidifying, the grinding of a thumb-knuckle against his prostate slowly wearing through him like friction on a rope. It was hard to draw a line between the last few threads of that rope stretching thin and the moment when they finally snapped, Emil's gasping and keening already reaching their height before he got there.  
  
It built up in waves, and he was too breathless to make noise long before he got to the peak. When he finally returned to awareness of himself, Emil felt slightly nauseously dizzy from how long he'd been short of air. His cock must have produced something during all that, because it felt like all of him had been pulsing, and he was so drained now. The wide-eyed, full-body shivering he had been left with made it feel like an afterthought.  
  
The satisfied noises behind him had stopped. After Emil took his first good breath, heaving it in with all the strength his chest had left, Lalli finally spoke. "Out now?"  
  
"Ahh, mm." Emil let his face fall down and went as limp as possible as Lalli rearranged his fingers into the slim shape they'd entered in, gently withdrew them and placed both his hands on Emil's hips to steady him. "Lalli, you, ah - "  
  
Lalli rolling Emil onto his back before leaving the bed made several parts of him bloom with new aches. It felt like he'd been hit all over with a heavy bag of sand, his arms still tied behind him and making his back arch up, the ache of his shoulders being pressurised for so long sparking into mild pain. When Emil tried to sit up a little, the bite mark on his butt turned into a little burning halo, and it registered that he'd be thinking of this every time he sat down for the next week. Lalli had definitely intended that effect as much as the rest, and Emil lay there in the glow of knowing it until Lalli climbed back up, his hand wiped off and holding a mug of water.  
  
"Lalli, could you - " Lalli set the mug down on a roofbeam and reached behind Emil, loosing his restraints with one pull. "Mm." Emil picked up the glass of water, spilling a little with the way his arm shivered, and drank it as fast as he could. When he finished it, he lay back still breathing a little fast, and Lalli lounging beside him with his head propped up on one elbow looked very much like an artist appreciating his own masterpiece. The air of smugness to how he fluffed Emil's scanty chest hair up, relieving it from where sweat had stuck it down, was more than justified. Lalli deserved the chance to stroke and make those extremely satisfied noises, after that. Emil would be trying to reciprocate this feeling, eventually, but he needed to wait until his limbs stopped feeling like jelly first.  
  
"Lalli, you're amazing." He finally finished the sentence he'd first been trying to get out, turning towards Lalli and finding his reaction to just be more happy humming and fondling. "You're so good. Do you know how good you are?"  
  
Lalli seemed perfectly content to watch Emil drape himself over him and start to melt into a doze. Really, it wasn't fair to just take that and then go to sleep, but Emil did feel so incredibly drowsy. He was unsure how long it was before his light nap was interrupted, the sound of Lalli snorting with laughter breaking through the fog. Emil yawned as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. "What's funny?"  
  
Lalli tilted his head as if listening, and Emil mirrored him, starting to listen too. He registered the noise of some sheep wandering close to the cabin, bleating plaintively at each other. It took him a moment to make the connection to Lalli's humour.  
  
"You're the worst."  
  
Lalli's smirk now was much broader than anything most people ever got to see. Emil decided he was suddenly rested enough, and climbed over Lalli to straddle him with one of the worst attempts at a cross expression he'd ever made. Wiping the smirk from someone's face by making them moan instead wasn't exactly a glitteringly witty comeback, but it worked.  


	26. Chapter 26

Reynir rarely got one of the children handed off onto him alone, but the harvest season was so busy that everything became slightly chaotic. Laura had always been very clear that Reynir could leave whenever he wanted, but she'd been very quiet on those reassurances for about a month now, and he didn't blame her for clearly hoping another hand would stay on deck. The final peak of the heat also brought more work for those who could go to the edges of their patch of relative safety, patrols and precautions increasing along the sides of the lake and near every fence that stood between the clean and diseased forest. Jaana handing Tuuri to Reynir and telling him to just try to keep her close by all morning was fine by him.   
  
When Reynir had arrived, Tuuri had usually tried to crawl out of his arms the moment she was put there, her preference for more familiar people very obvious. She knew Reynir now though, and Jaana claimed that the _Leimii!_ she'd come out with once recently was an attempt at his name. She happily toddled around him in circles or clung to him as he went about doing odd jobs, and the distraction from how much he'd been worrying was welcome. It was hard to get through things, sometimes, given how upsetting everything still was with Onni. Of course, he tried to keep it hidden enough to not bother people when everyone was so run off their feet, but Reynir could tell most people were holding back some comment on how obviously upset they both were.  
  
Reynir was making himself appropriately useful here, he knew that. Even Lalli had some respect for his work, waiting with a wary stance and gun in hand while Reynir painted more runes in the woods, although he still never showed Reynir any real friendliness. This was another thing Reynir worried about, though. While he'd been as useful to Lalli as he knew how to be, the old wariness remained. He did have the impression that most people got this sort of vibe off Lalli, so perhaps some of it was just his face. This treatment still compounded the feeling of having really messed something up again. Even watching Tuuri chase chickens couldn't keep his mind off how bad he felt about it.   
  
Reynir had tried so hard to be helpful to absolutely everyone here, and had almost succeeded, but the fact he might have actually made Onni worse - of all the things that could have been the exception to his general usefulness, it having to be that was unbearably awful.   
  
Maybe they'd seen too much together to ever be normal with each other again. They'd met at such a terrible time in Onni's life, come together again in such a strange way, and then Reynir had helped unearth a level of sadness it didn't seem fair for any one human to need to express. For a short and lovely time, there'd been a real sweet humour between them, and Reynir getting to enjoy the silly warm feeling of Onni's serious-faced attempts to look after him. Onni still kept up that earnest air of responsibility, but the strain it put him under meant it was impossible to find it as endearing as before. As much as Reynir hated to admit it, he had to accept that maybe they'd run their course, burned through each other too fast in that mess of feelings. Perhaps, in their haste, they'd even left disfiguring marks as they went.   
  
He'd really thought it would help to talk about things. After it had happened, it seemed sensible to suppose that what Onni had done was getting at something like the same truth more formal help did. Certainly, putting it all out there like that had affected Onni tremendously, but perhaps in the end it had been an act of cruelty to push him that way. Like a creature that wore its skeleton on the outside, Onni seemed to crumble without his shell, and Reynir just didn't know how to build him up again. If this didn't work out somehow, Reynir didn't know how he'd ever stop feeling bad about it. He had a horrible suspicion that there was actually no more that could be done from his side.  
  
"I just can't get over how, I don't know, personal it felt to be invited there again." Tuuri had no idea what Reynir was telling her as he sat her down inside for some mid-morning snacks, nor did she seem to care, waving her cup and yelling for milk again. Reynir fixed it for her, still rambling out loud about his feelings. "The way he said it, it just felt almost rude to say yes, even if he did ask. It's so weird to think I used to just walk in there." Even if she didn't understand, at least she couldn't actually suffer from him venting. While of course she had even less idea than Reynir did about what might help Onni, or help him work out what Lalli's issue was, he had promised to chat at her in Icelandic and it might as well be about this.   
  
Tuuri looked at him while he spoke with wide and totally uncomprehending eyes, pronounced a long "Juu" that Reynir had learned was both her "Yeah!" and a default response to anything she didn't understand, then clambered down from her chair and toddled into the next room. Reynir followed her, not quite in time to prevent yet another incident of the poor cat zipping past him, hissing in anger at her clumsy approach. Tuuri tried to follow it, yelling nonsense syllables, then flopped down on the ground. The cat's clean escape was always very upsetting to her, and her face screwed up in the prelude to crying.    
  
"Whoa, hey, oh no. Oh, Tuuri, listen." She started wailing, although her loud initial scream of anguish turned into a sniffly grumble when Reynir picked her up. "The cat only hates you because you keep bothering it when it's sleeping." The signs of her stopping crying had been a false positive, and she started to bawl again louder than before. "You know, it liked you until you grabbed at it when it was trying to hide! Oh dear, I wish you could understand me." Reynir supposed that even if he had spoken Finnish, the concept of a cat's personal space would likely be beyond her.  
  
Reynir's attempts to distract Tuuri with whatever sound-making objects he could find nearby took a long time, but were just about starting to pay off when Lalli passed through, his footsteps quiet enough to be unnoticeable were it not for the slight creak of the door as he entered. His face quirked unreadably as he spent a second watching Reynir's hapless attempt to interest Tuuri in hitting an upturned pan with spoons, but aside from that he didn't even acknowledge Reynir as he made his way across to the kitchen. Reynir never knew how Lalli managed to move with such quiet, almost like the way the cats moved when taking extra pains to avoid the loud children.  
  
The penny, one that had probably been teetering on some edge for a while now, finally dropped. "Oh, wow, am I the densest person alive?"   
  
Tuuri hit the pan three times in succession, making an interesting enough noise to finally get her past the stage of tears. "Juu!"   
  
"Honestly, that's fair."   
  
It turned out Tuuri had sort of helped Reynir work out what one of his problems might be, after all. The different topics he'd been rambling at her about for the last half hour seemed so obviously related in retrospect, and Reynir was possibly the densest person in the world, and he didn't even know if Lalli would take the kind of apology he was realising might be merited. He'd try as soon as he could, though, and maybe that would mean one problem out of two was on its way to being solved. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on "Reynir" getting mangled into "Leimii" - Finnish children often replace an R with an L while they're still acquiring sounds, because the trilled Finnish R is articulated from the top of your mouth in a similar way to a very loose L. For example "aurinko" and "koira" ("sun" and "dog") become "aulinko" and "koila", and stay that way quite late into childrens' sound acquisition (that trilled R is a pain the butt to learn). Final-consonant clarity is also usually too advanced a feature for a two-year-old, one I think Finnish children would struggle with especially given that Finnish is the language consonants forgot and almost every case conjugation causes words to end in vowels. I feel like I might have mentioned that already, but just in case I haven't, there you go.


	27. Chapter 27

Onni had always felt like August was the cruelest month. Yes, Feburary bit at your cheeks, but no wind could be as bitter as the divide that the warm weather always illustrated for him. Most years, it was still easy enough to repress the unwelcome and uncharitable feelings of watching other people swim in the lake and walk through the woods without fear. He'd had a lot of practise. Repression was so much harder this year, though, and the horror of caring so deeply for yet another person just as vulnerable as himself was very keen. Watching Emil and Lalli go to the lake to swim, secure in their immunity and smiling at each other, made Onni want to go into the toolshed and jam a vice down on his hand.  
  
Instead of doing that, he cried the moment he had time, with a force that wracked his body and surely could be heard from outside of his room. The floodgates opened by Reynir and his dream lament seemed impossible to close.  
  
It wasn't fair or kind to feel this way about blameless people living their lives, especially when both of those two had done their best to help. Onni was so sick of emotions that just fed into this unproductive cycle and made getting up in the morning harder. He'd been the one to make the mistake of letting those feelings show themselves in full, and now they couldn't be stopped. It was all his own fault, and beyond exhausting.  
  
Still, the crops came up just as they always did, shooting up in the long bright sunlight with the desperate speed of everything that relied on summer's merciful brevity. Oat fields shimmered like the lake when the wind hit the sea of slender stalks, and the sheep behaved better than they ever had with Reynir's ward-runes keeping them away from it. The peas and barley didn't like this season too well, but the fattening bodies of the lambs as they chewed down more and more fast-growing grass was a reassurance. As the month wore on, the harvester came out of the Tiainens' barn, and its roar could be heard across the fields of every farm in the area. In the smaller patches, Onni worked with his scythe, the slowly building burn of exertion doing less to calm him down than it should.  
  
Onni was distant. Reynir clearly still cared so much, despite how hard Onni was to care about. Having such a gentle heart break for him was another thing that made Onni cry.  
  
It was unwise to wander by the lake alone now, but when Emil took the children to the water, Onni followed. He stood a short distance from the edge, close enough to watch but far enough to retreat should any tainted vermin emerge, and noticed that the cygnets that had hatched in earlier summer were now well into their most awkward and ugly stage. Their parents, gliding as serenely as ever, never seemed to even register how few young they had compared to the start of the season. The birth of ducklings and cygnets, the sheer number of them that came into the world only to thin out one by one as the season went on, always made Onni feel a terrible sentimental sadness. Viivi just squealed as the big birds got close to her, oblivious to anything but the water and her attempts to make Emil carry her around.  
  
Later, Onni thought about the endless fight that the swans faced every year, their dogged persistence in nesting again and again despite the fact most of their young might die. Even the effortless-looking movement of a swan was the result of endless paddling, no less frantic for being invisible. The natural and universal immunity of birds couldn't stop life being a struggle for them, and Onni cried about that too. He didn't know how it was possible to be this utterly fed up of crying and still need to do more of it.  
  
As terrible as this peak of summer heat was, and as distant as he was being, Onni didn't know what he would do when the merciful cool brought Reynir's departure. It wasn't right to depend on him to help finish this, even if he'd clearly helped start it. Onni still felt that selfish desire, though, to keep Reynir around. It wasn't that it felt good to have these breakdowns around him, exactly, but Onni still felt a deep panic when he considered the option of his company being taken away. It was incredibly difficult to think about.  
  
The sun's heat kept rousing monsters from the bed of the lake. An alarm in the forest sounded again, but Onni saw nothing of the aftermath. Nobody had been out there when they were triggered, and Laura and Lalli had gone with guns to deal with it, so there was nothing more that needed to be done. The dry ring of the scythe and the pitiless blue of the sky went on, even Onni's mental fog unable to obscure their brightness. The forest near the house swarmed with healthy creatures. Continuing to have thoughts like this while nature bloomed its hardest felt like self-mockery.  
  
Janne was so annoyed when the tomatoes he'd been put in charge of broke off in a harsh wind. Onni explained to him that the broken stalks should begin to grow again soon, and sure enough, within days they were producing more shoots that turned them into a short little bush of new leaves. Perhaps they wouldn't manage any more flowers and full fruit by the end of the season, after a setback like this, but Janne threw himself into helping revive them anyway.  
  
It wasn't a desire to put himself at risk that made Onni walk closer to the lake one day, but a sincere need to appreciate the way it shone, before it all turned to ice again in a few short months. There they were again, the cygnets that had lasted, waddling along and grazing with no awareness of their own mortality. He'd come out here to stand under the trees, see the glitter of the sun, appreciate the lake even if he could never go in it. This kind of evening light in the sky was one of Onni's favourite things, a part of the world no cruelty or sickness could ever mangle.  
  
His eyes instead filling with tears again over the fate of these little birds' siblings broke something in him, but not like the things that had been broken in him before. This was tedious, and tiring, and he was tired now. He didn't have the patience any more for this inability to get on with the basic tasks of living. Realising that the endless inner refrain of _I'm sick of this_ now dominated even the grief brought more tears, at first. He'd been _sick of it_ for so long it seemed like an impossible state to change, but as time ticked by and more tears fell, the mess of frustration was finally crystallising into resolve.  
  
Onni belonged to the forest as much as the birds did. His feeling of oneness with the woods had always been a comfort, but until now he had never made the connection he did in this moment. As with everything else in nature, all that could be done was to try to flourish with whatever survived, however thinned out and broken it was. The scattered pink shreds of the sunset clouds turned to blurred blobs in Onni's vision, and he turned back to the house.  
  
He heard the hum of Reynir's wheel as he climbed the stairs. The sound had become so constant that it hurt to hear, knowing it would go away one day. Reynir looked up at Onni as he lingered at the top of the stairs, taking in the sight of this willowy, gentle man at his quietest.  
  
Reynir's face creased with worry as Onni approached. Onni supposed his eyes must be red again. Reynir had become far too used to Onni approaching in tears, to the point that Onni wondered what else there was even left to see in him, but he still stood and moved past the wheel to greet him. The scent of a sheep's oils had been released into the air even more than usual, and it looked like Reynir had been spinning straight from the raw fleece, making a fiber that would keep off rain as much as cold. When Onni came close to Reynir and took his hands, the feel of them confirmed that was exactly what he'd been doing.  
  
Of course, this was why Reynir's hands were always so soft. The flow of lanolin-soaked fluff between his fingers couldn't smooth out all that a familiarity with pitchforks had done to his palms, but once again Onni noticed they were far more tender than he ever expected a farmer's to be. Now, they were freshly softened and lightly greasy with the excess sheep oil. Reynir didn't question the nature of Onni's greeting, letting him just keep holding his hands, his expression inquiring but the patience he'd learned for Onni holding him back.  
  
Onni sighed. "Reynir." He didn't know how to express the things he'd been thinking about in Finnish, much less Icelandic.  
  
Reynir kept waiting. The moment stretched on, and he filled the time by taking one of Onni's hands in both of his, gently squeezing it and kneading an oily thumb-tip into the calluses of Onni's palm. The casual way he shared his own softness, working it into Onni's harsh outer layer without a second thought, made Onni feel the most wonderful kind of foolish. He'd wracked his brain endlessly for the right metaphor to describe what Reynir meant to him, and this action outstripped all his efforts in an instant.  
  
"You're so good for me." Onni barely more than whispered it.  
  
Reynir paused in the massaging. "Am I?" The question was so genuine and confused, Onni's barely-absent tears started to prickle again.  
  
"Enough that I don't know what I'm going to do when you go." Such blatant neediness made Onni scream internally at himself.  
  
Reynir looked down at Onni's hands, picking up the one he'd neglected so far and rubbing a second work-hard palm against his own. "Do you want me to? Laura's always said I can stay as long as I want, but I can also leave when I want to as well." Onni couldn't work out what Reynir's tone here was at all. It was carefully casual, subtly wavering with uncertainty, his sentiment conditional on something he hadn't made clear yet.  
  
"You shouldn't stay here. Where you live is safer." The old self-hatred definitely sprung out when Onni wavered into teariness on the second sentence. If he was the one to _manipulate_ Reynir into staying somewhere that could be his death -  
  
"I'm not scared." Reynir, in dropping down to Onni's whisper, seemed to get steadier. He pressed his lips together for a moment. "Well. I'm not scared of Finland."  
  
"What are you scared of?"  
  
"Things staying like this." Reynir looked hurt by his own honesty, and Onni knew full well why. It hurt him too.  
  
Crying while you gripped someone's hands was probably not the most convincing thing to do, when you were swearing that you wanted to try to make things different. It made it too clear that there was so much to work on, and that this decision was only the beginning. Reynir believed him, though. The promises being pulled out of Onni would be hard to keep, but as ever with Reynir, they were good ones to be held to. Guilt at even suggesting Reynir should stay in a more dangerous place than he needed to persisted, the battle with Onni's selfish relief bringing on near-incoherency. He didn't deserve someone who was this invested in helping him change, but by some miracle, he was getting it.  
  
"The autumn is less dangerous anyway, they said." Reynir had welled up himself, clearly struggling with the sight of Onni going to pieces as much as ever. "I - I have thought about this, you know, quite a lot - even when we were only starting to - the winters are so cold here, but Onni, you're so warm to sleep next to. If we can work this out, I don't think I'd mind the winter." He squeezed Onni's hands again, blinking. "I don't want to plan anything now that could go wrong, but I do think about it. You should know."  
  
Everything about this was scary beyond belief. The idea of Onni being the warm half of a warm and soft winter was too nice to be something that could actually happen to him. To feel deeply in a world that hurt so much was such a fundamentally terrifying thing, and learning to do it without breaking would be hard. Finally, though, Onni was starting to believe it was the only thing left to do.


	28. Part 8: Autumn Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Syys" is an old word for autumn, so "Syyskuu" (September) is autumn month.

Lalli squatted in a patch of long grass and the fine edges of its blades itched a little against his wrists where they hung down, a distracting feeling that almost made him grateful for the fact he was back to wearing long boots and layers. The long cooldown had finally begun, leaves yellowing and berries swelling out of every bush in the forest's farewell to warmth and light for the year. Lalli loved the smell and look of this season, the trees shifting into their quieter state, all the residual life-smells of summer giving the deep woods' night scent a richness that was indescribably pleasing. Of course, it also meant that blueberries were ending up in all the food, which everyone else was very excited about and which Lalli treated as summer's final trial. Mushrooms were imminently following, a bridge he'd cross when he came to it.  
  
The grasshopper he had been watching crawled to the top of the blade it was scaling and fell off, flailing on its back for a moment before righting itself and hopping onto Lalli's knee, where he quickly enclosed it in his hand. Peering at the wriggling creature through his fingers, he wondered if this little piece of free protein would be one of the good-crunchy ones or the weird-crunchy ones.  
  
A rustle in the grass near him revealed Herr Nilsson approaching him, her fluffy tail jerking in greeting. As ambivalent as Lalli was about cats in some ways, he did keep an eye on what all the local ones were up to, and the recent change in this one puzzled him slightly. They had no toms here, and he was sure the one that lived with the neighbours hadn't been to their farm. She was definitely pregnant, though. Perhaps given that, she needed snacks more than he did. When he flicked the bug at her she made a happy trill and pounced on it, chowing it down with her tail flicking.  
  
She was being followed, it seemed. Lalli stood up as Reynir approached, wondering what on earth might merit him making such an obvious beeline over here. He was sure they'd already communicated about anything they'd need to this week, and Reynir himself didn't seem to have much of an idea what he was doing, playing with the end of his ridiculous braid and fishing in his pocket with visible awkwardness.  
  
The awkwardness only continued after Reynir had found a piece of paper and peered at it for a few seconds. He opened his mouth, closed it to peer again more closely, then began to read off it. The result was him pronouncing a terribly accented "Lalli... I need... to say... something."  
  
Watching him read the next line over several times before starting again was kind of painful. "I am sorry... I came to your stove space."  
  
"Do you mean my dream space?" Lalli remembered Emil messing up the difference between those two words too, once upon a time.  
  
Reynir's awkwardness increased tenfold on being actually asked a question. He clearly didn't understand a word of what Lalli had just said, which made this whole situation even more puzzling. Taking a few paces forward, Lalli got within reach of Reynir and plucked the paper from his hands. Its contents were in Onni's handwriting, several phrases, some of which had been annotated with strange combinations of vowels indicated above the actual ones.  
   
"Lalli, I need to say something. I am sorry I walked right into your dream space. It was incredibly rude to do so without asking. I would not do it now that I know how rude it is. Also, nobody is making me say this. I was very, very persistent in asking Onni to help me apologise to you. I do not know that last part is on this page."  
  
Reynir stood stiffly as he watched Lalli read it, fold the page neatly two ways, then hand it back to him. It had been an awfully long time since that happened, certainly, and even a fairly long time since he turned up here last winter and ruined Lalli's week. Lalli hadn't really thought about whether Reynir had done anything obnoxious specifically since arriving, but in eight months, he actually hadn't been hugely offensive in any way. His relationship with Onni did seem to have caused some upheaval, but Onni wasn't exactly trying to call it off, from the looks of things. Lalli was at least wise enough to know it wasn't his job to decide what any happenings between those two meant.  
  
As much as Lalli still found Reynir to be inherently ridiculous as a person, he supposed there was much less reason to dislike him now compared to when they'd been younger. Reynir was markedly less prone to dramatic outbursts here, and looking back at how strung out he'd felt all the time then, Lalli felt like he must be calmer now too.  
  
Reynir wasn't leaving. He did require some kind of response, probably. "I understand. I will remember that we don't need to avoid each other now." Of course, that was met with confused blankness again. Lalli wasn't sure what Reynir wanted, exactly, if he needed an answer but couldn't understand anything. Leaning forward, standing on his tiptoes and patting Reynir twice on the head, Lalli tried just saying "Okay, Reynir" in as clear a voice as he could. At that, Reynir brightened up.  
  
"Okay?" The smile was again rather annoying, but not annoying enough to be a mortal wrong.  
  
"Yes. _Okay._ See you." With no more productive chat possible, Lalli turned to depart.  
  
"Oh! See you!" So Reynir had learned to say at least one word like a normal person would. That was nice. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Finnish, "stove" can be "uuni" while dream is "uni". I once had someone ask me "was your stove warm enough last night?" and thought she was being slightly rude.


	29. Part 9: Slush Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Finnish name for October (lokakuu) isn't as cute as most of the others, but it's accurate. 
> 
> Art by verdisketch.tumblr.com! I haven't used illustration before besides maps but it was too cute not to ask if I could use it somewhere in here.

Reynir tried to keep his expectations low, knowing how prone he was to building things up in his head and ending up disappointed. Aware as he was that he'd made himself expect little, he felt like the progress Onni was making was surprising. He didn't know what was going on, really. Maybe the divine powers Onni had met with in his lamenting were finally reaching down to provide some balm for his wounds. Onni's stated feeling of being just too sick of his own nonsense to do anything _but_ recover didn't quite make sense to Reynir, but he tried to accept there was some logic to it that he couldn't himself see.   
  
Onni seemed convinced Reynir had helped an awful lot. For once, Reynir felt glad to say he didn't think that was true. Whatever was going on, he was sure it was all Onni, at the core of it. Realising how warm the pride in him for that glowed was proof that Reynir had realms of useless affection for this man to discover yet.   
  
Of course, things exceeding expectations didn't mean they were easy. Laura stayed in her lane as a matter of habit, but when Reynir made the carefully casual statement that he didn't feel bored of working here yet, he could feel that she was concerned. Having her gently point out that he'd gotten sick a couple of times lately, and he usually seemed to never get sick, and that constant emotional work could wear you out just as much as forking hay did - Reynir got the point, and he knew there was truth to it. His mother would have given one of her patented supportive telling-offs, if she'd seen Reynir letting someone do this to him. Onni truly didn't know what it looked like to depend on someone a normal amount, though. After nearly twenty years of unhealthy restraint, everything other than that looked the same, and it felt unfair for Reynir to begrudge it even when how constantly upsetting it was got to him.   
  
Really, spending so much time together wouldn't have been so draining in the first place if Reynir had just known what to do. He felt like he was messing it up all the time. They'd stopped sharing a bed, in any sense, after Reynir had been quarantined. Onni's physical affection had remained present enough to be clear he was still invested in something or other, but had stopped at the sad, quiet way he would kiss Reynir's knuckles and cheeks after crying around him again. When Onni kept his promise to ask for things he wanted, speaking directly towards his own feet with arms crossed as he told Reynir he'd really like it if they slept by each other again, that one was easy. Reynir liked having someone next to him as much as Onni did, and it wasn't that emotionally complicated, to be a warm person to hold at night.   
  
It was more complicated when they started having sex again. Reynir had thought it seemed fine while they were kissing, perfectly normal while they got their clothes off, Onni's breath in his ear the right kind of staccato the whole time it happened. He thought by now he was used to the sight of Onni crying in all circumstances, but watching him do so after that was absolutely horrifying. In the long, awkward conversation following, Onni admitted he'd been holding that back a few times. Feeling like he'd been doing something that terribly wrong this whole time was almost enough to make Reynir give up, but the questions about what he'd done wrong led somewhere productive in the end. Of course, Reynir had noticed before that Onni crashed hard after any break from his general cloudy outlook. Feeling joy was fraught partly because of how novel it was. "It's not you", said Onni for the dozenth time, and Reynir kept his promise to believe it.   
  
It was increasingly clear that sticking with Onni while his mind adjusted to this new way of doing things was going to be a lot of work. That night, Onni was for once the first to fall asleep, Reynir lying quietly but consumed with worry. He knew Onni's own magic was guiding him as best it could during the endless crying, the powers woven into his sung sadness being the ones that knew him best. Still, Reynir's fingers couldn't help but follow a familiar pattern, when Onni lay against his shoulder and let him idly stroke his back. He'd drawn the wayfinder rune so many times he could do it blind, and his hands moved that way before his brain even caught up to them doing so. Maybe the glow under their pair of blankets was just body heat, and maybe it was something of the magic seeping into the two of them. Either way, Reynir was tired the next day. He'd rarely stayed up late as often as worrying about Onni made him do, and it was starting to show.  
  
The world outside of Reynir and Onni's increasingly tight-knit relationship was changing too. Most of the trees here were needle trees, and didn't do much more than take on a different mood as the skies got greyer and the sunsets earlier. Some changed dramatically, though. The birches were things of stunning beauty, the colour scheme of their silver trunks and red-gold leaves enough to make him stop and stare. The lake's mood was subdued compared to summer's brightness, and the sheep seemed dutifully intent in their demolishing of their last open-air food. It was getting past the time Reynir had initially expected to go home, and soon this lingering would be a very deliberate decision, one that he had to admit was mostly about Onni. As much as he liked the work and everyone else here, were it not for him, staying wouldn't be nearly as tempting.   
  
After a few weeks where Onni had been very much on a see-saw, seeming unusually centred in himself for a few days then relapsing into being just as much of a mess as he'd been a couple of months ago, Reynir wondered again if he was cut out for this. Of course, he cared, and he never expected this to be fast. This gentle man he'd fallen in love with was extending care back again, clumsy but so deeply heartfelt, and when things were like that Reynir felt like perhaps the gods were helping guide Onni to his balance after all. In one of his many "Are you there, Freya? It's me, Reynir" moments, he wondered out loud if he would ever know for sure whether their magics and gods were doing the two of them any good.   
  
The lack of subtlety with which he got his answer made Reynir feel like he was being slightly told off for wondering. Reynir didn't know how he'd managed to sleep through the first half of it, given that some of the cat blood had already ended up on his arm where it had been wrapped around Onni, and he jerked his head up in surprise.   
  
"Shh, don't move too much." Onni had clearly been calmly watching Herr Nilssen have kittens on him for quite some time, looking unperturbed by the mess of fluids and small cats collecting on his torso. Reynir just lay his head back down and resigned himself to not getting up until she was done. It was very early in the morning, anyway, still dark and with the moon providing little illumination for the sticky scene. Onni crooning away in Finnish to the cat was soothing enough to make Reynir spend half the time dozing, despite being very invested in knowing how many of these kittens there would be. Sunrise and a final count revealed six of them, all with markings absolutely identical to their mother's. "I guess this is their bed now too" was all Onni said about the matter. At least him no longer pretending not to love that cat was yet another good sign.   
  
Reynir didn't know whether he should explain the significance of kittens for couples starting a life, or even if he needed to. Maybe there was a Finnish goddess who loved cats as much as Freya did, and kittens to a new household were practical gifts even without their connotations, so it could be that everyone was thinking the same thing. He declined to mention it for now. As ever, the kittens turned out to be not only an omen, but a gift. Even if Reynir didn't know what he was doing, Freya clearly loved and aided him as much as ever. Onni had been on the mend before, but the slow embrace of joy in his life was only accelerated by the six matching creatures crawling around and mewing in the room he and Reynir had started sharing full-time. Reynir heard people wondering what they were going to do with such a large amount of kittens, noticed how oddly similar they all looked, and for once kept his mouth shut when he started to suspect how this had happened.   
  
As the season moved from the early autumn onwards, and all the beautifully coloured leaves fell, those same pale birch trunks met the monochrome of the thick clouds to now look unbelievably stark. Against a slate-coloured sky, the pines had a melancholy to them that Reynir would never have guessed from their look in other seasons. The kittens opened their eyes, and Reynir walked in on Onni kneeling by his bed, watching them fumble around in utter captivation. Seeing Onni so lost in that, for once totally unaware of himself, was probably the final straw when it came to Reynir realising he really was not leaving Finland anytime soon. When Onni finally noticed Reynir standing there, there was a moment where he seemed to stiffen into his usual awkwardness around being sweet. Reynir came to join him, resting their heads together, and he relaxed. The two of them sat together and wondered aloud about when it was time to give these kittens names.   
  
Onni still seemed to find it mortifying, keeping his promises to ask for things when he wanted them and say things when he felt them, but one day Reynir noticed that he'd come to trust it would happen anyway. The experience of joy no longer seemed so alien to Onni that it led to an inevitable crash, and the worst of the summer's breakdown was long over. The effects of such long neglect might never be totally cured, but the trajectory seemed so clearly to be upwards that it no longer felt totally foolish to hope what they had would keep getting better. Reynir's main problem now was wondering what on earth to reply when his mother wrote to ask when he was coming home. There was really no non-concerning way to tell one's mother "Well, I know I didn't mention much about him in my letters home so far, but actually I've met a man while traveling abroad and I'll be staying with him."   
  
Saying you hadn't mentioned him before because the details would seem concerning was even worse than saying nothing at all. In the end, Reynir had to just apologise profusely for not telling her earlier, and say it wasn't exactly true that they'd met less than a year ago. _He's sweet_ , Reynir wrote, _and I promise you'd like him. The cat had kittens in our bed while we were both sleeping in it, and I think the omens are clear. I will keep sending you mittens every Yule._ He felt rather bad about this, given she'd tried so hard to make him the one that stayed home. Well, sometimes the gods were as kind as they'd been to him, and sometimes they treated people's plans as just a chance to exercise their sense of irony.   
  
One day near the end of October, Emil approached him. Reynir still found it a little awkward when he and Emil tried to communicate, but they got on surprisingly well now with what they shared. A small stock of shared Finnish and the odd burst of mutual guessability between their native languages wasn't enough for a conversation, but the system was slowly improving. Emil didn't need to tell him much today, though, only taking him very sincerely by the shoulders and saying "Thank you" before departing again. It was confusing, even more so when Jaana came by and told him "Wow, benevolent gods really do work through you, Reynir."  
  
"Eh?" Reynir didn't know why she was mentioning that now.  
  
"Just wait till you see Onni." Tuuri squirmed in her arms and yelled "Omi!" as the two of them moved on as well.   
  
He remained puzzled until later that day, when Onni finally made an appearance for the first time in hours.  
  
"Oh! You cut your hair!" Reynir immediately swung around behind him and started to pat the soft fuzz where the long tail had once been. "Here I thought you were the type to keep the same haircut for your entire life."   
  
"You don't like it?" Onni seemed even more intensely self-conscious than usual.   
  
"Oh, I do! It's adorable!" Reynir finished his circuit and ended up back in front of Onni, taking his face in his hands. Onni's face looked lighter, fresher, slightly younger this way. While Reynir had always found the mullet kind of charmingly bad, this was definitely better.   
  
Onni exhaled. "Good." He definitely had more to say, whether or not he was actually going to say it, so Reynir went quiet for a moment. "I, ah. Emil always is telling me I'd look better without um, back part, and I thought maybe you agree with him."  
  
Reynir was still slightly stunned at Onni having any feelings about his appearance besides wishing there was an invisibility setting. "I mean, it was fine before, but I do like this better?" Kissing him was more to do with being happy he'd thought of it than with being happy about the results, but if Onni took it just as confirmation of how attractive Reynir found him, that was fine too.   
  
With the start of winter looming, Reynir told Onni that he'd mentioned to everyone who needed to know that he intended to be working here next spring too, and he didn't see the point of making a journey back now. The next day, he realised that he couldn't find any of his socks. Not only had he brought quite a few with him, several of the pairs he'd made here had been for himself, so that was quite odd. When he finally looked in Onni's drawer to see if there were any to borrow, the explanation for his problem became clear. Onni had neatly folded all of Reynir's and integrated them into his own sock drawer, responding when questioned only that they had the same size feet anyway, so it made sense.   
  
"You could have just said that you don't want me to ever leave." Reynir's exasperation was mixed with so much fondness there was barely any weight to it.   
  
Onni had another of his quiet moments. "I didn't know that was what I meant until you said it."   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm fully aware that the factoid "Cats were given to new brides in Viking Scandinavia" is barely if at all reflected in contemporary sources, but given the way mythology is simplified/sanitised/modernised in SSSS canon I feel it's acceptable license to claim Reynir thinks it's legit. Either way, it's true that Freya loves them and she might well send a whole bunch of them to say "of course I'm rooting for you, dingus".


	30. Part 10: Death Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, this chapter title sounds ominous, doesn't it? That's just the Finnish word for November, though. "Marraskuu" comes from an old word for death, and it is indeed the month where everything - the plants, the sunlight, people's motivation to leave the house - dies.

Jaana was finding this to be a day for odd conversations. When she visited the neighbours, Maija was her usual self, although more clearly than ever angling for some kind of information about what Jaana intended with her oldest son. Jaana wasn't sure herself, but felt oddly optimistic about it. She was not one to romanticise easily, but Timo was very genuine, good with kids and completely convinced that Jaana knew far more than he did about most things. Starting to visit his mother this often wasn't just because she lived so close, and Jaana had seen the tiny, grainy picture in their kitchen that proved Timo's father had looked the same at his age, so he was only going to get more attractive. If nothing went wrong, she supposed she did have intentions.  
  
The walk home was starting to become truly grim, the clouds sparse but the sky still having a pale cold look to it. Fresh grass had long turned to leaf litter, then to mud and slush, and now the snow was finally starting to stick to the ground. Jaana felt like no matter how long she lived, she would never get used to how quickly the light seemed to fade as winter approached. She hadn't thought to bring a lamp with her, but as she passed through the shadows of the woods she felt she almost needed it, despite it not even being the mid afternoon yet.  
  
The sun was low over the home fields as they opened up in front of her, and leaving the trees made the damp bite of the wind feel even fresher. Passing by the barn, she found Emil leaning against it by himself, arms folded and brows knit in an expression of deep thoughtfulness or concern. Lots of things caused Emil to make that face, often as mundane as him needing to attempt arithmetic in his head, but Jaana did remember he'd been worried about something specific earlier. "Emil! Are you okay there?"  
  
Emil snapped out of his daze with a little jump. "Oh! Yeah, I'm fine."  
  
"I did talk to Sanna. I'm sure I was right, the sauna-tonttu is still happy with everything, I don't know why it was looking at you like that."  
  
"Maybe that was the first time it saw me, as well." Emil's tone was unreadable, his mind clearly still not quite on the person talking to him.  
  
"As well?"  
  
"I dunno, I never used to notice it."  
  
How odd. Jaana hadn't thought in that much detail about why precisely such things might be invisible to some, and when they might become impossible to ignore. "I guess you weren't used to paying attention." When he went very quiet again instead of responding, she really couldn't work out what the problem might be. "Does it bother you that it's interested in you?"  
  
"No, not at all." Emil's answer was quick, then his odd look returned with no further comment, starting to seem almost wistful rather than concerned. It didn't sound like he had a pressing need to elaborate, and whatever difficult thoughts were occupying his brain were likely best left uninterrupted. Jaana left him still leaning against the barn, too absorbed in staring towards the darkening woods to even register how this winter-laden wind was rearranging his hair.  
  
Inside the house, the disruption of there being six small cats along with three small humans running around was as evident as ever. Keeping Tuuri from squashing any of them had been an endeavour, although the older two had been extremely helpful in that once motivated by being allowed to name some of them. One of the kittens being named "Moonshine" was probably an indignity it could bear in exchange for Viivi's eternal, earnest protection, and watching Onni awkwardly realise this was a sort of attempt to name the cat for him had been hilarious.  
  
Onni was there, trying to gather several kittens up and looking much less annoyed by their underfoot shenanigans than Jaana usually found herself to be.  
  
"I still have no idea what we're going to do with all of these. We shouldn't keep them all."  
  
Onni looked up, a kitten in each hand. "You know, Reynir claims they were a gift from Freya. One of his gods."  
  
" _My_ guess is that they were a gift from his rune demonstrations. I have no idea where the paper he drew that kitten-making spell on went, but with the mess the kids make in here I'm sure it could hide for at least as long as it must have needed to." Jaana knew she'd spoken to Onni about being shown that spell at some point, and gestured at the mass of identical kittens squeaking at Onni's feet. "They're obviously clones. Look at them."  
  
"Well, the gods work within the world. Are human deeds not part of this world? The flesh we act through is no different to that of the wild creatures, and moving a drawn page need not seem different to moving the winds. Mielikki watches and guides the sheep Laura altered as much as she does the deer immune by chance." Onni gathered the two kittens he was holding into one arm, picking up yet another to add to the pile growing close to his chest.  
  
"Very true words. You still have to give away at least some of these cats."  
  
Onni briefly looked grumpy when his attempt at philosophical diversion had no effect, his expression turning to pure butter again when he looked at the mewling mass of fluff in his arms. "Keeping four of them would be giving away _some_."  
  
Jaana sighed. Perhaps it would be easier to do this part once the cats were a bit older, less adorable and big enough to be eating everything. At least after a summer of people tiptoeing around his overpowering sadness, and watching Reynir look so incredibly tired, seeing Onni enjoy something this much was nice. Perhaps it would be good to say so. "You seem happy, Onni. It's really lovely that Reynir is staying around, as well."  
  
"Oh." Onni had finally managed to gather all the kittens and had been moving as if to leave, but stopped there. "By the way, er. I hope you don't mind, or anything."  
  
"He does twice as many dishes as anyone else, nobody could mind that."  
  
"No, I mean, when you - um." Onni's characteristic embarrassment had returned. "When you mentioned that at one point you er, you asked him, I guess you - you - "  
  
"Oh! I'd forgotten about it, to be honest."  
  
"Ah." Onni looked surprised and even more freshly embarrassed, but still relieved.  
  
"Two for two, I guess." Jaana waved him off without even thinking about her comment, then realised the moment she'd said it that of course Onni had no idea what she'd been angling for the first summer she met Emil. To her, it was just quite funny that both Hotakainen men had managed to inadvertently end up with someone she'd at some point had interest in, but she still didn't want to actually tell Onni the story. In the moment of Onni looking puzzled about what she'd said, Jaana wondered what she might explain that one away as.  
  
"Oh, right. I'd almost forgotten. When you were both fourteen?" Now it was Jaana's turn to wonder what Onni was talking about. "It took me weeks to get Tuuri to tell me what had happened, you know. I thought you two were going to become mortal enemies."  
  
Finally recalling the ancient incident Onni must be referring to felt very strange. Jaana hadn't thought about it in over a decade, the ridiculous misunderstanding that she and Tuuri had briefly fallen out over in their early teens, and she didn't think she could even remember what the boy's name had been. "Ah, yeah. I think she felt worse about it than I ever did." Even before the summer, the topic of Tuuri-the-first was one Onni had seemed unable to talk about without becoming tense and upset, so Jaana was expecting her accidental reference to become the start of something unpleasant.  
  
Onni just shook his head, and to her surprise his expression of exasperation was a totally normal one. "You lot were the reason I found my first white hair at twenty-four." He finally departed, hugging all the kittens to him and heading towards the staircase. While you could never truly tell, Jaana actually felt pretty sure that having remembered wouldn't be making him cry this time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Finnish, the kitten's name would be "Pontikka", which has no accidental connotations of pretty moons at all and is a much worse-sounding name for your cat.


	31. Part 11: Winter Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The current Finnish word for December is "joulukuu", or "christmas/yule month", but an older word for it is "talvikuu", "winter month".

Emil felt terrible for not noticing until mid-morning that Janne was nowhere to be seen, although Onni had been just as surprised as he was that their eldest charge hadn't been spending the day following him around. After the two of them had worked themselves up into a proper worry, Reynir's head came around the door, braid swinging ahead of it in the slightly comical way it always did. His chat with Onni, of which Emil still understood little, revealed that he'd seen Janne following Lalli into the woods.  
  
"He could have mentioned he was taking him!" was Emil's comment on that, and one he repeated when Lalli came home with a small hoard of dead things and a tired Janne. "Lalli, I had no idea you were taking him out there."  
  
"He wants to learn to hunt." Lalli looked approvingly at the small pile of things they'd placed on the table. "It's good, he's getting stronger. He can come sometimes if he wants."  
  
"The point is I didn't know where he was."  
  
Janne chipped in. "I'm old enough to decide where I spend the day without telling you, _Emil_." His tone had a specific grumpiness to it that Emil had never heard from him before, one that was oddly familiar but took a little while to place. When Emil realised that it was the exact same tone he'd used on people constantly during his early teens, the moment of self-reflection it came with made him feel absolutely catastrophically old.  
  
Yes, he'd noticed Janne turning ten. Before that, he'd realised that reading to the two of them had become less than necessary; only Viivi actually paid attention to it now, and she could probably read it herself if she didn't mind skipping out on the voices. He'd noticed them making their own food, and growing out of their clothes, and Janne starting to become obsessed with music in a way that was clearly all his own personality. The fact Lalli no longer found them constantly grating was more proof they had changed. Despite technically registering all the signs of them no longer being properly small when they'd appeared, the experience of Janne attempting to snark at him was the first time Emil realised that in three years, he'd be raising a teenager. The thought was a bit panic-inducing.  
  
"Onni, he's going to be 13 before I'm 30. Aren't I too young to be raising a teenager?" When Emil asked that, the look Onni gave him was something like despairing incredulity. "Okay, you know what, forget I said that. Never mind."  
  
Continuing to whine about this particular existential crisis would be a show of poor perspective. It was still certainly something, and looking at it on this kind of time scale made Emil wonder what his teenage self would have said, were he to hear that one day he'd be raising kids in the woods with his boyfriend's cousin. Certainly, it wasn't the kind of arrangement or set of life goals he could picture most of his own family going for. Lalli didn't seem to understand what Emil was even commenting on. "You're the one who pays attention when either of us has a birthday. I thought you would know better than anybody how much time passes."  
  
Time certainly was passing, and the most major change of the last year had sunk in oddly. It somehow felt like Reynir had arrived here only weeks ago, yet also like he'd been part of the routine here forever. Emil wondered if this was just how life was now, changes never again feeling as instantly quantifiable as they had during the more structured life-tracking of his teens. Lalli did agree about that one being weird. He hadn't expected anything about "Laura's friend visiting" to turn out like this, although he still expressed so few opinions about all of it that Emil wondered if there was something he was holding back.  
  
The opinion finally came out on a day close to the winter solstice, Emil hanging around by the stove to wait for the bread while Lalli also happened to be sitting curled on the thin kitchen windowsill. Lalli's cheek must have been cold laying against that window, each breath leaving a brief but wide coating of fog where it touched the glass. The sweater Siv had made Lalli when she'd first heard of his and Emil's involvement had come out again this winter, tattier after all Lalli had put it through so far, but still brighter than anything he'd ever acquired himself.  
  
" _Ugh_. They're so gross." Lalli said it as if he was continuing a conversation they'd already started.  
  
"Who are?"  
  
"Come look."  
  
Approaching the window, Emil peered out to see Reynir and Onni coming up the snowy path together, still far away enough for their colours and forms to be muted by the early dusk. They were conversing very cozily, but not doing anything Emil would have thought was too much. "They're just walking together."  
  
"They'll get worse. They're always getting worse."  
  
Lalli was right. Before the pair got properly close to the house, Emil was pretty sure he saw Reynir's hand swatting at Onni's backside. Even if they were too far away to hear properly, the ensuing body motions looked like those of two men overcome by giggling, and Onni swooping in with the cheesy face-grabbing kisses was definitely quite a lot. "Oh. Ew."  
  
"You see?" Lalli gave one of his best I-told-you-so looks, then put his cheek back to the windowpane with a sigh. "Reynir's really staying here, isn't he."  
  
"It looks that way." Reynir and Onni were still at it, presumably convinced that in the midwinter darkness nobody was going to see them acting like lovesick teenagers. "I feel like we probably shouldn't be, you know, staring at them while they do that."  
  
"Mm." Lalli turned his head slightly, and Emil went back to watching the oven. The bread-scented humidity of the kitchen once again lapsed into silence.  
  
"You're alright with him now though, aren't you?" Now it was Emil's turn to break the silence as if it had never started.  
  
"Mm. We had a talk. He does make Onni weirder, but I guess it's fine."  
  
"Weirder?"  
  
"He keeps telling me things about appreciating me."  
  
"Oh right, that." Emil did feel like Onni expressing himself a bit more nowadays was a good thing, but it was true that it still felt a little odd every time it happened. "I wonder if Reynir's ever going to learn to speak Finnish. He's certainly trying."  
  
"Only the gods know."  
  
Emil and Lalli pretended they'd been doing nothing like watching them from the window when Reynir and Onni came inside. The two arrivals were also interested in the fresh bread, so they all ended up eating together and had to pretend for even longer. Emil vowed to find some way to get Lalli back later, when the near-undetectable _ugh_ expression was opportunely deployed his way again to nearly make him laugh while he was eating.  
  
"I hope you know I'm following you specifically to inconvenience you." Emil had grabbed his coat and a lantern at the same time Lalli did, tailing him as he headed out the door towards the woods.  
  
"Have you ever done anything else?"  
  
"Really, though, do you mind? I'd kind of like to go for a walk, so if you don't mind slowing down a bit on your way out..."  
  
"Sure."  
  
The snow was deep enough for Emil and Lalli's feet to be sinking a little as they stepped, catching in the tread of their boots then dropping behind them in pressed little grey spots, but not so deep as to hide the shape of the ground yet. Twigs and tree roots protruded as grey tracks and flecks, the brilliant white carpet of the deep winter still a few weeks away, the dim gloaming making everything seem like a muted patchwork. It was already near night as they passed the full barn and crossed the empty fields, so entering the cover of the forest shut out almost all the rest of the light. Emil's lantern caught the edges of a spruce's frosty needles, and the shine on and through them was like a strange brother to the natural dappling of the forest in summer.  
  
Lalli walked ahead, calm and silent, his steps so light Emil's felt embarrassingly heavy by comparison. Not nearly as much as they used to, though, this path being one he walked increasingly softly these days. It was hard to recall exactly when these forests started to feel like home, and they walked for longer than Emil intended, their pace not rushed but still quick.  
  
In a small clearing, it became apparent that night had properly fallen and the moon risen. Lalli paused in the centre, gazing up at the faint sliver of it that could be seen through the trees. Here, deep in the dark forest with arms coming up to greet the moon, he briefly looked exactly as he'd been when Emil had first met him. Nineteen and unknowable, observing the world with his big bright eyes, a quiet mystery that had become a portal to learning about every kind of magic the world contained. He still had that wildness, the one Emil had once thought was totally unreachable, but here on the old edge of the world wildness had become home.  
  
Lalli's hands were coming down, his communion with the moon sufficient for now. Emil crossed from the edge of the clearing and took one of those hands, the fabric of their early-winter gloves not quite thick enough to stop a little of one person's heat reaching the other. Lalli looked at the hands gripping his, his face resting in the slight frown Emil had come to read as softly neutral.  
  
"I think I'll go home now. I'll wait up for you, if you want." Lalli's affirmative little head motion made Emil lean in to kiss him lightly before departing, and Lalli brought one hand up to Emil's hair before he was done, making him linger for a moment more than he meant to. It brought up the memory of what they'd seen earlier. "Lalli, are we gross too?" Emil was probably settling the question when he squished their noses together as he spoke, holding his lantern uselessly low at his side and grinning.  
  
Lalli didn't move, and his serious-sounding reply was only as loud as it needed to be to cross the tiny space between them. " _You_ are."  
  
Emil's walk back through the woods was comfortingly quiet. A light wind still moved the tops of the pines every now and then, but mostly all he could hear was the sounds of his own feet and breath. Alone in the quiet winter forest, Emil felt at peace. To feel love and belonging with one wildness was also to feel it with its source. In the trees and snow and air, the gods lived, and they agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I hadn't forgotten about the sweater I mentioned at the end of "Kasvatus"! In my head, Siv went a bit more muted than usual, but it's still a mess of patterns. 
> 
> So, this is the final chapter of a series that is now... 106 chapters long. I'm amazed that anyone has stuck with me through all the wildly different themes that this series has explored. If you did read the whole thing, I'm kind of intrigued to know what different people thought was the best done, because I've gone all over the place here. As I've said, writing this series has basically been the process of rediscovering how to write at all for me, so each time I've done something has been a big first time experience and it's lovely that people have been so encouraging.
> 
> I do have more plans for the timeline I've established here (if people want to read them), but they are different enough plotlines, and feels like a good place to leave everyone. I will go back and edit a few things at some point - making Moscow look more accurate, deleting a few chapter notes here and there that are just apologies for updating slowly - but in terms of narrative I guess we're done.
> 
> I want to say something cool, because I've been spending so many evenings on this for months now and it feels weird to end the era without saying something. I guess I'll take a break before I start writing again - I mean it this time! I have a big gay heavy metal roadtrip around Iceland planned this month and I definitely can't write while we're attempting to turn all 80+ verses of Ormurin Langi into a car song - and later this summer I'll finish Ride Baby before I start anything else.


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